Pioneer
by Cyberfairy
Summary: A few years ago on TrekBBS a poster began a shortlived project to create an alternate, more militaristic and primitive version of ENTERPRISE this is the unfinished second episode and brief history of the project.
1. Chapter 1

A while back over on TrekBBS there was a fairly short-lived project to create a series of stories based around the 'alternate-history' concept – portraying a different take on the beginnings of Star Trek and the launch of Earth's first starship.

PIONEER was an attempt to create and develop an alternative to Enterprise, one which takes place in the same timeframe but with a darker, more militaristic undertone. Like the Enterprise NX-01, the Pioneer is the first starship constructed by humanity that is capable of achieving warp factor five, but this was where the similarities end.

Manned by a hybrid crew of scientists and soldiers who share a mutual dislike for each other, the Pioneer is launched ahead of schedule on a vital mission following an alien incursion of the Sol system.

These events were described in PIONEER'S 'pilot episode' Setting Sail, which can probably still be found lurking around the internet.

The series concept and its characters were developed by a poster known as 'R', who offered up his pilot episode and asked for other posters to contribute.

The story below is my unfinished attempt at a second episode, into which I tried to weave the important material from Setting Sail as a 'last time on Pioneer' sort of thing without hitting the reader over the head with obscure details – so that someone could (in theory) read the second episode and still understand what was going on.

Here is a brief outline of the 'bible' and main characters.

Caesar Hans – captain

Isabella Maxini – pilot

Antonio Levente – weapons officer

Svenn Holms – operations officer

Jolana Kahn – chief engineer

Quenton Marriot – medical officer

There are two primary groups on Earth that are concerned with space, these being the Solar Defence Force and the Earth Interests. The Solar Defence Force is a military organisation established to combat extraterrestrial threat forces, such as the hostile Orions who have launched a number of attacks on Earth. The Earth Interests is a science organisation who wish to expand the planet's space-program so that humans can explore other planets and meet alien races.

The Pioneer itself is humanity's first starship that is capable of attaining a velocity beyond warp factor five, and was constructed as a long-range exploratory cruiser. Its development was a private venture by the company DeSaab, and therefore the project has received no financial assistance from any government body. Whilst the military Solar Defence Force had no input into the Pioneer's construction, the science-based Earth Interests were permitted to make a contribution. This is the EI's second joint-venture to develop a prototype vessel that can travel beyond warp five, the first being a project that resulted into the building of the SS Perseverence during the 2120s.

Concerning the alien races that occupy the region surrounding Earth, the humans have had contact with a number of species as of 2154. Obviously, the Vulcans made First Contact with Earth following their detection of Zefram Cochranes prototype warp ship ninety-one years earlier in 2063. However, less than a year after First Contact, a Vulcan starship attempting to land in Arizona was destroyed accidentally by a nuclear missile launched by an Eastern Coalition submarine.

The Orions have launched a number of attacks on Earth, which have been repelled by the Solar Defence Force and the pilots manning their 'Bulldog' spacecraft. The Orions have also employed a number of mercanaries to carry out attacks in the past.

So if you'd like to take a look at a different take on Enterprise have a read and leave me some feedback!

Thanks.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER 01 

The _SS Pioneer_ banked gracefully in space upon the orders of her helmsman, her streamlined hull slicing through the incomprehensible vastness of space as she was propelled by her powerful ion engines.

The massive Earth starship, the first of her kind and the only human vessel capable of reaching warp factor five, operated in a region of the galaxy that had thus far only been charted by robotic probes. These probes had been sent out from Earth many years earlier, by the human science administration known as the Earth Interests.

Svenn Holms was the ranking member of the Earth Interests, or EI, to be aboard the Pioneer. In the preceding years, when the EI had combined their efforts with the private aeronautics company DeSaab to create this magnificent spacecraft, Holms had been involved with almost every aspect of its construction.

Indeed, as a senior director for the EI, he had been the intended commanding officer for this new ship, the individual who would captain the _Pioneer_ during her historic exploration of the galaxy. With her revolutionary warp engines driving her at previously unattainable velocities, the vessel would blaze new ground, and take humanity to countless new worlds.

But history it seemed, had in mind a different role for Svenn Holmes.

Some weeks earlier, a renegade alien spacecraft had infringed on Earth's territorial space, beginning a chain of events that had led to the Solar Defence Force commandeering the _Pioneer_ to launch a rescue mission. The objective of that mission, had been to retrieve Captain Caesar Hans, who had somehow managed to involve himself in the affairs of yet another alien race.

The culmination of these events had deposited a permanent detachment of Solar Defence Force soldiers aboard the _Pioneer,_ led by Captain Hans and with SDF officers holding vital positions throughout the ship's senior staff.

Holms had eventually been assigned the position of operations manager for the vessel, whilst retaining his role of Earth Interests director with the responsibility of overseeing the EI crew and the scientific operations of the _Pioneer._

Privately, the director wondered how the Earth Interests vision of a deep-space exploration ship manned by the best EI scientists had gone so badly wrong. The mongrel crew of science and military officers had still to find a mutual respect and the means to work together as a unit, and the disrespect of either side was almost tangible.

Holms could only hope that somewhere along their ambitious course to this distant alien world, a planet that lay almost twelve months from Earth even aboard the _Pioneer,_ this combined crew would discover a way to operate as a group.

The sound of footsteps nearby drew Holms from his reverie and back to the issues of the day, and he realised that he was standing in one of the starship's many corridors just outside a cabin.

Quickly, he pressed his finger against a small control panel on the doorframe, listening to the chimes that followed.

Holms wryly observed that he and the individual who occupied these quarters, were the very personification of the opposing sides of the _Pioneer's_ crew. Holms held the position of senior Earth Interests scientist, while Caesar Hans was the ranking Solar Defence Force officer, the man who was in overall command of the ship.

As much as he hated to admit the fact, even to himself, he still felt a modicum of resentment toward Hans. The _Pioneer_ had never been intended to be Hans' ship, and had been constructed under the auspices of the Earth Interests with Holms in mind as commander.

"_Come in,"_ a disembodied voice said, carried by the concealed communications grid embedded in the _Pioneer's_ internal structure.

The door panel hissed softly as it retracted into the bulkhead on its tracks, the computer having recognised the occupant's command to allow the visitor access to the cabin.

Holms stepped somewhat cautiously over the threshold, and quickly glanced around the compact stateroom. Despite the _Pioneer's_ status as the largest exploration ship ever built by Earth, space was still at a premium. Even the commanding officer of the spacecraft didn't occupy an especially large living space.

Caesar Hans' quarters were almost identical in their basic structure to the other senior-staff cabins that had been designed when the _Pioneer_ had only existed on the DeSaab drawing boards, but the captain had added small touches of individuality.

A handful of paintings had been hung around the room, most of which depicted what Holms recognised as Solar Defence Force military spacecraft. These items of artwork only served to reinforce the director's opinion that Hans was indeed a soldier to his core.

The captain himself was seated behind a small desk, the surface of which contained a compact computer terminal. The reflections on Hans' face told Holms that the screen was active, and appeared to be displaying scrolling text.

"Mr. Holms," Hans began by way of a greeting, glancing up from his computer and leaning back in his chair, "What can I do for you?"

The Earth Interests director heard the door slid closed behind him, driven by its miniature electro-hydraulic servos, and regarded the captain. Seated in that position, Hans was framed by the vista of sparkling stars afforded by the viewport.

"As you know," Holms said slowly, "Part of the _Pioneer's_ mandate is to chart as much space as possible as we head out from Earth."

Hans frowned slightly as he considered the other man's statement. "Correct," he confirmed, not quite understanding.

"We're currently approaching a solar-system that appears to contain a quantum-singularity," Holms explained, "Or at least that's what my sensor-analysis of this region's gravitational-fields would seem to indicate."

"A black hole?" Hans asked curiously.

Holms nodded in confirmation. "A small one," he elaborated, "Myself and the Earth Interests crew would like the opportunity to study it."

Hans pressed the tips of his fingers together, appearing to give the request some thought. "How long would your analysis take?" he inquired.

"Perhaps two days," Holms responded quickly, though he privately intended to petition Hans for more time once the investigation of the singularity was in progress.

After a few moments of silence, the captain spoke up with an answer. "We've made good progress over the last few weeks," he said, referring to their journey toward their eventual destination, "I think we can afford two days stop to study your black hole, Mr. Holms."

In spite of himself, Holms was taken aback by the agreement. He had expected Hans to be against the idea of stopping the Pioneer to investigate an anomaly such as a quantum singularity.

"I appreciate that," Holms said, noticing that Hans had already directed his attention back down to the scrolling text on his computer screen, "May I ask what you're reading?"

"Your service record," Hans replied without missing a beat.

"I beg your pardon?" the director snapped, shocked that this man was casually reading through the details of his life.

Hans looked up, a wry smile gracing his features. "No need for alarm, director," he assured him, "I've been reviewing the SDF and EI files on all the Pioneer's senior officers. I decided that it would be a good way to familiarise myself with my crew."

"I see," Holms said slowly, still reeling from the revelation that personal information on him was currently streaming across Hans' computer terminal.

After a brief pause, the captain spoke again. "Interesting time you had aboard the Beagle," he said calmly, "I had no idea you were such a warrior."

Holms felt his chest tighten in response.

Hans regarded the EI director closely. "Did I strike a nerve?"

The scientist drew in a long breath. "We all do what's necessary to survive, captain," he answered quietly, his words containing an almost deadly edge.

Hans inclined his head in silent agreement. "Indeed," he answered, obviously satisfied with the response that he had provoked in Holms through his words.

But Hans' victory was short lived.

Before either man could speak again, the deck beneath their feet shuddered heavily, and the rigid superstructure of the mighty starship groaned from metal fatigue as the Pioneer was struck.

Less than a heartbeat after the vessel was hit by whatever force had managed to jolt it so violently, alert sirens began to sound throughout its many decks, calling the hybrid crew of scientists and soldiers to their stations.

"What the hell was that?" Hans demanded, his question obviously rhetorical since his visitor had no information to offer.

As the captain vaulted from his seat and came around the desk, Holms staggered toward the doorway as the Pioneer was hit again.

Again, the spaceframe screamed in protest to the impact, and crewmembers in every section were thrown from their feet and onto the hard deck.

"These don't feel like weapons-strikes!" Holms called over the wail of alarms, deciding that it was somewhat merciful that missiles weren't impacting the outer-skin.

"Bridge!" Hans called, reaching for the intercom panel on the bulkhead beside the doorway.

No response was forthcoming from the ship's command centre at the pinnacle of its globe-shaped primary hull.

"Why don't they answer?" Hans asked, his intense eyes locking onto Holms like laser-sights.

"Maybe that first hit disabled out communications grid," Holms suggested, though he had no evidence with which to back up his theory, "Or they're too busy trying to keep the ship together!"

Hans didn't respond, he simply lunged at the doorway and threw himself out into the corridor. The passageway was illuminated by the pulsing red lights that denoted an alert situation.

Holms followed in the captain's wake, as the two men stumbled down the corridor toward the nearest intersection where they knew a turbolift junction was located.

Suddenly, the ship was struck again by whatever force was looming beyond the hull, smashing the stricken vessel to starboard faster than the inertial dampers could compensate.

Holms was flung violently into a bulkhead, his head impacting with the wall so hard that he momentarily blacked out. Fighting an overwhelming wave of dizziness, and feeling the strong hands of the captain grasp his arm, he willed himself to stay upright.

With the assistance of Caesar Hans, the EI director finally reached the turbolift, the doors of the awaiting car opening on his approach. Once inside the enclosed space of the car, Holms' fingers sought out the handrail and he held it for support.

"Bridge!" Hans commanded impatiently.

On the captain's orders, the turbolift car swiftly accelerated along a vertical path toward the command centre, its own inertial damping system reducing the feeling of motion to almost nothing.

"How long can the ship sustain this sort of battering?" Hans asked, his face a mask of concern as they anxiously awaited the turbolift's arrival at their destination.

"Not for long," Holms answered breathlessly, his head aching from his fall in the corridor outside the captain's quarters, "Whatever's hitting us is pretty fierce."

After what seemed like an eternity to its passengers, the turbolift slid smoothly to a stop upon reaching deck one. The twin door panels parted, allowing the two men to disembark.

Hans flung himself out of the lift and into the command centre, closely followed by his science director. Holms surveyed the bridge, his eyes locking onto the main viewscreen that dominated the forward bulkhead.

Displaying a computerised image of space via the ship's visual sensors, the large viewer showed nothing more than the starry deep.

There was no alien warship discharging its weapons at the Earth vessel.

"Report!" Hans called out to the bridge crew, descending the series of steps to the central arena and dropping into his command chair.

At the tactical console situated on the quarterdeck that encircled the bridge, SDF Commander Antonio Levente glanced over his shoulder to address the captain. All around him, rotating schematics of the _Pioneer_ flashed red, denoting systems damaged by the unceasing impacts.

"It looks to me like intense gravimetric shear!" Levente responded, his hands moving over the complex tactical controls with the rhythm of a pianist, "We're taking a pounding, sir!"

"Can we escape the area of disruption?" Hans asked, grasping the arms of his chair as another, less intense wave of gravity shook the ship.

Isabella Maxini, another Solar Defence Force officer, replied from the helm, where she was engaged in a frantic battle with the flight controls of the imperilled vessel.

"Not without going into warp, captain!" she called back, "And the fluctuating gravity fields are making it impossible to create a stable warp field!"

As the SDF officers exchanged information with their captain, Holms assumed his customary position at the bridge's operations console, and swiftly scrutinised the multiple sensor streams being displayed.

Despite many of the _Pioneer's_ primary sensors having been taken offline by the jarring impacts of the gravimetric shear, Holms was able to see a familiar pattern. He touched several points on his console, reconfiguring the ship's sensors to obtain a more precise scan.

"Ion drives to full thrust!" Hans ordered from his command chair, "And divert all auxiliary power to augment structural integrity!"

"We may have a bigger problem than we thought, captain!" Holms announced finally.

"What is it?" Hans asked, turning in his chair to look at the EI officer.

"This isn't simply gravimetric shear," Holms explained quickly, "There's a storm brewing out there."

"A storm?" Levente interjected, a confused expression visible on his face, "In space?"

Holms nodded. "An ion storm," he confirmed, "We won't escape this with sublight engines, we're going to have to ride it out."

In the command chair, Caesar Hans addressed his crew after a brief pause. "Baton down the hatches!" he instructed everyone, acting on the advice of his EI operations manager, "We're going to sit tight until the storm passes us by!"

"I recommend shutting down all nonessential systems," Holms continued, "There's a good chance that they could overload if we keep them online during the storm."

"You heard the man!" Hans called, "Take all propulsion offline until further notice! Shutdown everything except life-support, gravity and lighting!"

"Should I use the reaction-control thrusters to try and hold our position?" Isabella Maxini asked, "Like dropping the anchor on a sailing ship?"

Hans craned his neck to look at Holms, silently requesting a recommendation.

Holms was pleased to note that the captain wasn't so proud that he wouldn't ask for Earth Interest assistance when necessary.

"Set them to compensate automatically for drift," Holms told Maxini, "The RCS system should be able to hold position without too much difficulty."

Maxini tapped the appropriate sequence into her console. "Setting for automatic," she confirmed quietly.

Suddenly, something changed about the _Pioneer._ Holms took a moment to realize that the almost subliminal pulsing of the powerful fusion reactor that drove the starship was gone.

Several decks beneath the bridge, the chief engineer had brought the Earth vessel's power plant offline.

As the man slated for command of the _Pioneer_ before the Solar Defence Force intruded upon the project, Holms was well enough acquainted with the ship's design to know that a total shutdown of the fusion core would leave the spacecraft effectively powerless for hours. The core was a hideously complex machine that couldn't simply be reactivated at the touch of a control, and would require a considerable length of time to be brought back online with a cold restart.

"The fusion core is offline," Levente announced from tactical, monitoring the shutdown of the ship's various systems via his internal sensors, "So are all the offensive and defensive systems."

"Primary and secondary sensors are also going offline," Holms added, feeling himself grow tense as the monitors around him abruptly became dark. With the shutdown of the ship's vast array of scanners, he felt the curious sensation of being blind and deaf.

Allowing his crew to carry out their orders, Captain Hans could only watch as the _Pioneer_ became little more than a floating hulk in the path of the impending ion storm.

"Do we have any idea how long we'll have to remain like this?" Hans inquired, just as the starship began to gently pitch and roll like an ancient sailing vessel on the ocean.

Holms shrugged. "From what the Earth Interests have observed with our long-range probes," he answered, feeling the motion of the ship become more pronounced as the storm front approached, "Ion storms are relatively brief phenomena. I'd estimate a few hours until it passes us by."

"So we just have to sit here," Isabella Maxini asked wearily, obviously not particularly enthusiastic about the idea.

"I don't think we have much choice," Holms replied without turning around, instead watching as the controls of the operations station became dark as the _Pioneer's_ computers went offline, "The area outside the ship is going to be charged with energetic particles in a few minutes, and having main systems online under those conditions would be suicide."

"Here it comes," Levente announced, feeling the trembling of the starship become more pronounced.

"Everyone hang on!" Caesar Hans cried, steadying himself in his chair.

A moment later, the full force of the ion storm struck the _Pioneer._

Antonio Levente peeled open a small pack of dehydrated emergency rations even as he struggled to sat in his seat, listening all the while to the pounding that the Earth starship was taking.

He sat in relative darkness in the vessel's mess hall, the primary dining facilities aboard the Pioneer, his unappetizing meal illuminated by a powerful halogen torch that he'd placed on the table before sitting down to eat. Around him, the crimson alert strips that ran along the bulkheads pulsed rhythmically, casting a bloody radiance upon everything in the large room.

But perhaps the most unsettling aspect of the entire experience, at least in Levente's opinion, was the constant shaking of the ship, causing every object that wasn't secured to vibrate and fall to the decking. The tactical officer felt this unceasing vibration transmitted through him, making him feel that every bone in his body was trembling.

The ion storm that raged on the other side of the Pioneer's two metre thick hull had hit over three hours earlier, at which point the vessel had been plunged into darkness with the deactivation of almost all her shipboard systems.

For most of that time, Levente himself had remained on the bridge with the other senior staff, simply sitting helplessly in their seats as the ship trembled around them. There had been very little conversation amongst them as they quietly awaited the end of the ion storm, creating a remarkable tense and uncomfortable atmosphere.

This atmosphere was only fuelled by the fact that no one onboard knew how long the Pioneer could withstand such a battering before her hull began to collapse. Hull breaches could be contained by sealing the affected sections of the ship, therefore retaining a breathable atmosphere within the pressurised sections, but multiple breaches would eventually spell disaster.

As a precaution, Caesar Hans had instructed the crew to evacuate the outer sections of the ship. If hull breaches were the eventual outcome of withstanding the ion storm, then at least the first of them wouldn't cost lives.

"Would you mind some company?" a voice asked from behind Levente.

The tactical officer glanced over his shoulder, and recognised Isabella Maxini standing in the entryway, her hands clutching the doorframe for support. Even standing upright had become something of a struggle in the last few hours.

The pilot's face was illuminated by the bright beam of another halogen torch, removed from the storage lockers on the bridge at the same time Levente had taken delivery of his own.

"Take a seat," Levente replied with a smile, watching Maxini stumble across the deck toward him and drop into a chair on the opposite side of his table.

The other Solar Defence Force officer interlocked her fingers and placed her hands on the table, her slender frame vibrating in tandem with the ship.

"How are things on the bridge?" Levente inquired, prodding at his ration pack with a fork and eventually lifting a chunk of dehydrated meat into his mouth.

"Pretty much the same," Maxini said with a sigh, "Hull integrity was down to seventy percent at our last estimate, but without the computers to monitor our status we're still just making educated guesses."

As he chewed the dry meat, Levente considered the information. The Pioneer had lost thirty percent of its hull integrity in the last three hours, so it was conceivable that the overall strength of the ship's outer-skin would now begin to degrade at a faster rate.

"Holms says the ferocity of the storm is decreasing," Maxini continued, "But it's still gonna be a few hours until it dies down to a point where we can use our warp engines."

Levente nodded absently, swallowing hard and feeling a mouthful of his rations slide down his throat. "These are disgusting," he muttered, regarding the plastic-wrapped rations with a look of disdain.

Maxini grinned. "It won't be long before we can get the kitchen facilities back online," she assured him, apparently deriving a measure of amusement from her colleagues displeasure, "I think I'd rather fast until then."

Levente wondered if he should take the same course of action. He certainly didn't relish the prospect of choking down the rest of his emergency rations. Apparently, even the Earth Interest scientists who had developed the Pioneer with the DeSaab shipwrights hadn't considered it necessary to include taste in their emergency provisions.

In some ways, Levente could respect that decision.

But having tasted the result of that same decision, he wasn't particularly pleased with it.

"How is Holms monitoring the storm without having the sensors online?" Levente inquired, the question suddenly occurring to him as he contemplated which foods he would order when the ship was clear of the vast ionic tempest in which it was stranded.

"He launched a series of probes out on different trajectories," Maxini explained, "So that they could take readings from various positions. Even though the probes all have an active power-source, the storm overloading them won't pose a risk to us."

Levente nodded absently, assimilating the information as he regarded the unfinished ration pack before him. Since the uncontrolled energy discharges of the storm sought out and overloaded shipboard systems, the Pioneer couldn't risk having any nonessential systems online, including her sensor arrays with which they could monitor the storm.

Since the vessel had been designed primarily as an exploratory vessel, she had a large complement of autonomous probes that were equipped with an array of sensors. If the probes were struck by an energy discharge, loosing them wouldn't affect the Pioneer's mission.

"He's set up a passive communications link with the probes so we can receive their telemetry," Maxini went on, "Extremely low power so it shouldn't pose a hazard."

"Sounds like he knows what he's doing," Levente observed, referring to the ship's senior most Earth Interests officer.

Maxini opened her mouth to respond, but before any words left her lips, the already trembling starship lurched widely to port, then to starboard as her flight-control systems overcompensated.

Levente was thrown to the deck, managing to turn his body as he fell so that the impact was absorbed along the length of his muscular frame.

He realised that the Pioneer had been struck by an ionic discharge, her metallic hull acting as a lightning-conductor to the immense energy being generated by the storm. Fortunately, these awesome arcs of power only sought out the battered vessel infrequently.

As he pulled himself upright, using the nearby table to aid his ascent, Levente saw Maxini scrambling to her feet after being flung from her seat.

"You okay?" the tactical officer asked, tentatively touching what he assumed were bruised ribs.

"This time," Maxini answered, "But I'm not sure how long I can put up with this."

Although he recognised that Maxini had intended her statement to be light-hearted, Levente wondered how long the crew would be able to withstand the psychological pressure of being stranded within the storm. Being hurled to the deck every few minutes was enough to put anyone in a precarious mental state, even if you didn't take into account the constant shaking of the spacecraft.

Suddenly, a burst of static issued from the personal communicator that Levente wore on his utility belt, followed by the distorted voice of the Pioneer's commanding officer.

"Bridge to all senior officers!" Caesar Hans called, "Report to your stations!"

With a brief glance at each other, Levente and Maxini ran for the doors to the mess hall.

Positioned at his operations console, Svenn Holms glanced up as he heard the sound of an emergency access hatch being hefted open at the rear of the bridge.

Antonio Levente and Isabella Maxini clambered from the small opening, having climbed the ladder inside the confined shaft from wherever they had been located on the ship when Caesar Hans had recalled all senior officers to the command centre.

Directing his attention back toward his console as the pilot and weapons officer swiftly moved to occupy their customary stations, Holms tapped a series of controls beside his primary display screen.

The screen itself showed only the most rudimentary sensor data under current circumstances, the secondary computers running on absolute minimum capacity to prevent an overload caused by the ion storm. The communications system was likewise operating at minimum power, receiving the telemetry from the five probes and relaying it to the operations console for Holms to decipher.

"Status?" Captain Hans asked from his command chair, the request for information directed specifically at the EI director.

"One of the probes we sent out is definitely receiving a signal of some sort," Holms responded, his fingers moving deftly over the sensor-controls as he spoke, "It seems too regular to be a natural product of the storm."

"Therefore making it artificially-generated," Hans concluded, his tacticians mind no doubt already considering how best to deal with any encounter with an alien vessel.

Holms narrowed his gaze at the incoming sensor stream being transmitted by the probe, trying to make sense of the confused readings that were being displayed. "It could be another ship," he offered, "But I can't be certain under these conditions."

"Understood," Hans replied, apparently sympathetic that Holms was seriously curtailed by the lack of powerful shipboard sensors.

"I've triangulated the probe's position," Holms said, "It's approximately four-hundred-thousand kilometres away."

The captain of the Pioneer appeared to take a few moments to consider his next orders, and the best course of action to be taken.

"Can we use the reaction-control thrusters to move closer to the probe?" Hans asked finally.

"Only at low power," Holms told him, "Anything more and we risk attracting a massive energy discharge from the storm."

"Maxini," the captain called, "Use the RCS system in drift-mode to bring us within range of the probe."

The pilot gave a short nod of acknowledgement before inputting the necessary commands, firing the thrusters in short bursts to give the Pioneer some forward momentum.

"I'm adjusting the probe's course," Holms informed everyone, remotely accessing the device's onboard guidance computer and inputting new commands, "I'll try to move it closer to the source of the signal."

Tense seconds passed as the Pioneer gradually closed on the free-flying sensor probe, easing forward through the turbulence of the storm.

Finally, the operations console began to emit a series of high-pitched chirps that warned the crew of a positive reading.

"I've got something," Holms announced urgently, "It's a stationary object dead ahead!"

"A ship?" Hans prompted, pushing himself upright in his chair.

"A ship or a space-station," Holms confirmed, feeling the adrenalin begin to coarse through his veins in anticipation of an alien contact, "Approximately five times our mass."

"Can we risk powering up the primary sensors?" the captain asked, obviously concerned that the Pioneer may be facing a danger other than the constant pounding from the ion storm.

"No," Holms replied flatly, painfully aware that the high-powered scanning beams emitted by the ship's main sensor arrays would attract the lightning strikes of the storm almost instantly.

Suddenly, as if to punctuate his words, the sensor screens before him erupted into harsh static.

"The probe was just hit by an energy-discharge!" Holms gasped in shock, "It's been destroyed!"

Hans was almost out of his chair. "Redirect another probe!" he commanded, "We have to know what's out there!"

Holms punched another series of commands into his operations console, calling upon one of the other four probes to reposition itself. He understood and shared Hans' concern, since there could be a powerful alien ship looming nearby, concealed by the ion storm. If a massive Orion spacecraft was obscured by the shifting energy fields, then the Pioneer would stand no chance in a battle with so many of her systems powered down.

"Captain," Levente called over his shoulder in a warning tone, "If there's another ship out there..."

The tactical officer's words trailed off, his point already made.

"The other probe is coming into range!" Holms reported.

"Scan the object!" Hans ordered sharply.

Holms tapped at his operations panel. "It's a space-station!" he announced, "Minimal energy output!"

"Let's see it," the captain said, pushing himself to his feet and advancing across the trebling deck toward the helm and navigation consoles.

The main viewscreen, served only by the most rudimentary and low-power visual sensors, changed as Holms pressed a control.

Through the static of the electrical interference, set against the constantly shifting backdrop of violet ionic energy, was a menacing alien space station, constructed from burnished dark metals. The vast facility was almost fiercely angular in its design, long arms ending in globes that rotated around a central sphere.

"How big is that place?" Isabella Maxini marvelled, the distinctive sound of awe present in her voice.

Holms empathised with the young helm officer, feeling a similar sensation move through him as he stared at the object that lay before the starship.

"According to these readings," the EI director replied, "It's approximately fifteen-hundred-metres in diameter, and has a mass of over seven-million metric tones."

Caesar Hans was hovering above the two flight-control stations, his eyes locked on the alien structure that dominated the viewscreen. "Is it crewed?"

Holms shook his head. "I'm not detecting any life forms onboard," he said, "But I can't be certain."

Hans paused. "Open all hailing frequencies," he ordered, "Keep the communications system at low-power, use conventional radio signals if you have to."

"Frequencies open," Levente confirmed.

"This is Caesar Hans commanding the SS Pioneer," the captain began, raising his voice to carry to the audio receivers on the bridge, "Please respond."

Holms held his breath as the bridge crew awaited a return signal from the space station that loomed above the Earth vessel.

"I'm not receiving a response," Levente said finally.

Hans turned to issue another command to his tactical officer, but at that moment the Pioneer was struck but the most powerful ionic discharge yet.

The viewscreen flashed a blinding white for an instant as the awesome arc of power lanced out of the storm, hitting the starship like a lightening bolt and driving it backward through space.

The hull screamed under the force, as her hybrid crew of soldiers and scientists were flung violently against the bulkheads and decks. Alarms cried out in every section, warning of extreme damage to the ship's systems.

"The storm's getting worse!" Holms called, shouting over the sound of alert sirens.

Before anyone could respond to the EI director's report, another discharge smashed into the Pioneer somewhere near her starboard warp nacelle, sending geysers of sparks out into space amongst shattered pieces of hull plating.

"Report!" Captain Hans demanded, managing to remain in his central command chair as the vessel was subjected to the jarring impacts.

"We're leaking drive plasma!" Levente announced, "It's coming from our starboard exhaust port!"

Holms gasped as he listened to the tactical officer's words, painfully aware of how dangerous the high-energy plasma being haemorrhaged by the ship could be, especially under such conditions.

"That plasma will attract the ionic discharges like a lightning-conductor!" Holms told everyone frantically, "We have to stop the leak!"

Hans reached for the miniaturized keypad embedded in the arm of his chair, seeking out a specific control before remembering that the ship's internal communications grid had been taken offline. Angrily, he snatched the personal communicator from his belt, speaking quickly into the compact device.

"Bridge to engineering!" the captain snapped, "We need the breach in our starboard exhaust port sealed immediately!"

From a dozen decks below the command centre in the bowels of the Pioneer, the voice of the ship's chief engineering officer responded within moments.

"I realise that, sir!" Jolana Kahn cried over the cacophony of the engine room, "But this sort of breach can only be repaired by going EVA!"

Monitoring the exchange from his operations console, Svenn Holms winced as he realised that if Kahn and her engineers were to stop the flow of energetic drive plasma from the vessel, they would need to don pressure-suits and risk a spacewalk.

"They can't do that, sir!" Holms interjected, "Going outside the ship while we're in this ion storm would be suicide!"

"I'll take the risk!" Kahn snapped, willing to put the safety of the whole crew above her own.

"It's not a question of risk!" Holms shot back, privately impressed with the young women's bravery, "You wouldn't get more than ten metres from the airlock before you were crushed against the hull by the pressure!"

But even as he spoke, Holms realised how pointless his words were. Ensuring that Kahn remained aboard the vessel only meant that she would perish along with her colleagues, since the Pioneer was currently a lit match amongst barrels of gunpowder.

It was only a matter of time before the ion storm sought out the leaking plasma and lit the proverbial fuse, causing the lonely Earth starship to erupt like an exploding fusion bomb.

Suddenly, a revelation struck Holms like another ion discharge.

"The space station!" he shouted.

Hans' head snapped around to face the Earth Interests scientist, but Antonio Levente was already following Holms' train of thought.

"Something that big has to have a docking-bay!" the tactical officer cried.

But Hans was still looking at Holms, apparently searching for confirmation.

The EI director nodded quickly, endorsing Levente's proposal.

"Get us to that station!" Hans commanded, directing his order toward the helm.

Isabella Maxini focused on her controls, tapping the necessary command sequence into the panels and easing the Pioneer forward.

Holms turned in his chair, watching as the immense object that they'd discovered in the centre of this ion storm began to fill the entire viewscreen as the ship drew closer.

The meagre sensor-readings being transmitted from the nearest probe told him that this station was over one and a half kilometres in diameter, larger than any space going structure ever conceived of by humanity's engineers, and was probably capable of supporting at least five thousand people even by Holms' most conservative estimates. The largest orbital habitats in the skies above Earth were home to no more than a thousand.

Driven forward by her thrusters, the Pioneer soared through the writhing energies of the ion storm, a long tendril of energetic drive plasma trailing in her wake. The starship quickly closed on the immense alien station like a tiny remora pursuing a shark, the eyes of her bridge crew locked on the primary display.

"It looks ancient," Caesar Hans muttered absently, narrowing his gaze at the ominous facility. At such a close proximity, even the impeded visual sensors could convey the extensive chemical corrosion evident on the station's vast hull.

Holms agreed with the captain's assessment, and found himself wondering why the builders of this place had allowed it to deteriorate into such a state of disrepair.

"Can you locate a docking bay?"

It took a moment for Holms to realise that the last statement had been directed at him, and spoken by Captain Hans. He surveyed his sensor boards intently, using the free-flying probe to examine the station's exterior.

"I'm detecting an opening approximately two-hundred metres in diameter," Holms said finally, "I doubt their docking facilities will be compatible with our own but we can use the bay itself to shelter from the storm."

"Allowing Kahn and her people to go outside and repair our starboard exhaust," Hans finished, turning to the helm, "Take us inside."

Maxini brought the Pioneer into a gentle turn, carefully lining the starship up with the entry to the docking bay and using the deceleration thrusters to slow their approach.

Holms held his breath as he watched the main viewer, feeling the curious sensation of confinement as the Earth vessel slid slowly into the large chamber. Around him, every primary control station began to softly chirp a proximity warning that solid matter was less than thirty metres from the outer hull. He had never heard these collision alarms outside of the EI space dock above Earth.

On the viewscreen, the ship's powerful and seldom-used searchlights lit up the bay like sunlight, having been activated by Maxini a moment earlier. The rear wall of the bay was less than two hundred metres from the opening, and was now drawing dangerously close to the bow of the Pioneer as the ship eased itself fully into the compartment.

As she slowed to a relative halt, floating debris skittered across her hull, shards of spinning metal that reflected the light being cast by the Pioneer's searchlights. Dozens of work platforms were clearly visible, some anchored to the walls of the bay and others drifting freely.

"We're at full stop," Maxini announced.

With his ship sheltered within the alien docking bay, Hans looked over his shoulder at his EI operations officer. "Are we protected from the storm?"

Holms nodded. "The station should absorb any more ionic discharges," he confirmed, "We can power up our some of our secondary systems."

A slight smile formed on Hans' face. "Excellent," he commented, rising from his chair and straightening his SDF uniform before speaking into his handheld communicator, "Bridge to engineering."

"Kahn here," a disembodied voice replied promptly, "Tell Maxini she'd better not scratch my hull reversing us out of here."

Hans grinned, glancing down at his helm officer. "Assemble a team to go EVA and repair the exhaust port," he instructed Kahn, "Mr. Holms assures me that you'll be protected from the affects of the ion storm."

"Understood," the chief engineer acknowledged, "Kahn out."

As she signed off, Hans ascended the steps to the upper-tier of the bridge where Holms was seated at the operations console. "I'm taking an away-team aboard the station," he informed everyone briskly.

"Are you sure that's wise?" Holms said quietly.

"I'd like some answers," the captain explained, "If this place is inhabited we should probably explain our presence in one of their docking bays."

On the other side of the bridge, Levente pushed himself away from the tactical console and rose to his feet. "When do we leave?" he asked enthusiastically, obviously having assumed that he would be part of the away-team.

"Immediately," Hans answered, placing his hand on the EI director's shoulder, "Mr. Holms here will accompany us. I'm placing Lieutenant Maxini in command of the ship until we return."

"If we return," Holms muttered under his breath.


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER 02 

As it turned out, the mechanical docking and airlock facilities aboard the massive alien space station weren't as dissimilar to those of the Earth vessel as Sven Holmes had initially thought.

Using one of the small shuttlepods carried aboard the _Pioneer,_ compact vessels capable of carrying two operator crew and either four additional passengers or cargo, the small away-team had left their ship. They were limited to sublight velocities due to the fact that warp engines simply hadn't advanced to the point where they could be incorporated into such small spacecraft, and as a result the shuttlepods were primarily used for planetary operations and ship-to-ship transfers as opposed to actual space flight.

The two primary flight and navigation consoles at the front of the cockpit were manned by Caesar Hans and Antonio Levente, who had deftly performed a launch from the _Pioneer's_ shuttlebay less than a minute earlier. Despite being sheltered from the raging ion storm by the docking cavern, the shuttle was still limited to employing RCS thrusters for propulsion rather than standard ion engines, as a safety precaution.

"I'm detecting a small airlock fifty metres beneath us," Captain Hans announced, scrutinising the sensor panel on his navigation console as the shuttlepod coasted away from its mothership.

Levente tapped at his controls, adjusting the little vessel's course accordingly and bringing them into a shallow dive.

"Twenty metres," Hans revised as they descended.

In the passenger compartment at the rear of the shuttlepod, Svenn Holmes could do nothing more than watch as the two Solar Defence Force officers coordinates their efforts to get them all aboard the station safety.

The searchlights set into the bow of the shuttle played their powerful beams over the airlock as the spacecraft drew level, and Holms visually inspected the octagonal structure that had been designed to allow arriving ships to nuzzle in and dock. Physically, the docking port and integrated airlock appeared to have rusted over, presumably due to some sort of chemical discharge since the absence of air in space generally prevented rusting. Indeed, the vacuum usually preserved objects in pristine condition.

"Activating docking-collar," Hans reported, tapping commands into his control panel.

The noise of mechanical movement resonated through the shuttlepod, as the extendable collar and docking-latches rose from its dorsal hull.

"Adjusting position," Levente added, using the flight controls to rotate the ship through three axes to bring the docking collar in line with the alien airlock.

Holms braced himself as the pod continued its roll, feeling disorientated as he watched the docking bay spin whilst the artificial-gravity maintained his sense of 'down' despite the manoeuvres. In conjunction, the inertial-dampers reduced the feeling of movement to almost nothing.

With precision thruster bursts, Levente nudged the shuttlepod upward relative to their current position toward the awaiting airlock. The craft made contact with the awaiting docking-port lightly, the buffers on the Earth ship's collar absorbing the impact before latching tightly onto the alien station.

"Docking-clamps activated," Captain Hans confirmed finally, his fingers moving over the console to secure the shuttlepod before the three men disembarked.

Relieved that he finally had a task to perform, Holms vacated his seat and rose to his full height, reaching up to the small dedicated control panel on the ceiling that serviced the docking collar.

"We have a good contact," the EI director informed his colleagues, checking the sensor readouts, "According to these readings there's a breathable atmosphere on the other side of the airlock, a little less oxygen than we're accustomed to but nothing that will cause problems."

"That's reassuring," Levente commented, sliding out of his acceleration seat at the helm after finalizing the engine shutdown and locking his console. Doing so was standard procedure aboard Earth vessels as a precaution against theft of the vehicle whilst it was unattended.

Holms' left hand moved to his utility belt to check that his EM pistol was still in its holster, finding the gesture reassuring as always. With his free hand, he punched in a command to the overhead console, and the thick panel that gave access to the docking collar withdrew into the ceiling with a short hiss of escaping air.

The interior of the collar was now visible, a narrow cylinder approximately two metres in length, constructed from a ribbed polymer fabric that collapsed almost entirely when retracted. On the other side of the cylinder, illuminated only by the dim light spilling into the tube from the interior of the shuttlepod, was an octagonal airlock door constructed from the corroded ochre metal of the space station. In the centre of the door was a circular viewport that had long since been frosted over by stray moisture sublimating in the vacuum.

"Can we open that door?" Captain Hans inquired, craning his neck to look up through the docking collar with the two other men.

"Depending on the density of the metal we could probably use cutting-lasers," Levente suggested.

Holms shook his head, privately marvelling at the SDF's innate ability to always propose a violent solution to a problem rather than exploring other alternatives.

Grasping the two handholds positioned on either side of the port, Holms pulled himself upward into the confined space of the docking collar, feeling his stomach roll uncomfortably as he moved out of the shuttlepod's gravitational field. Earth engineers generally avoided furnishing docking collars with artificial gravity, since zero-G allowed easier transitions between ships that had differing orientations.

Within this weightless environment, Holms pushed himself up against the airlock, pressing his palm to the freezing metal and wondering for a moment what alien being had set this door in place. He knew that the builders of this great station breathed a similar atmosphere to humans, and the size of the airlock itself told Holms that these aliens were approximately the same size as himself. But how many arms, legs or eyes this species had was still a mystery.

Perhaps more importantly, would they going to be hospitable or hostile to their uninvited guests from the distant planet Earth?

Holms wiped away the ice crystals that had developed below the frosted viewport, feeling the surface of his hand freeze uncomfortably as extraterrestrial scripture became visible.

The unintelligible alien signage was embossed, raised slightly from the door, and appeared to take a form that was reminiscent of the Egyptian hieroglyphics that Holms had studied as a young man. He presumed that these words, incomprehensible to him, gave some sort of warning about the operation of the airlock, but had no way to be certain.

Cautiously, he pressed his index finger against one of the raised glyphs, and instinctively snapped his hand back when the embossed scripture glowed from within. With no conventional control station visible, Holms had taken the only course of action he'd seen possible by touching the signage, and was surprised to find that it appeared to be the correct one.

With a loud sucking hiss and the groan of ancient servo motors being called upon for the first time in years, the airlock door withdrew a few inches from Holms before retracting completely into the deck.

Only darkness was visible through the new opening.

"Good work," Caesar Hans observed from beneath the EI scientist.

Encouraged by his success in opening the airlock door without resorting to slicing into it with Levente's cutting-lasers, Holms eased himself the remaining distance through the narrow docking-collar. For the second time in as many minutes, he made the uncomfortable transition to another gravitational-field, and found himself crawling out of a wall aboard the station as opposed to the ceiling of the shuttlepod.

Drawing his EM pistol from its holster and removing a halogen torch from the utility belt he wore around his waist, Holms slipped out of the hatch and tentatively placed his boot down on the metal grid of the deck. Shining his torch down toward his feet to ensure a safe footing, Holms could see that the beneath the metal latticework upon which he now stood, various conduits and cables were visible.

Holmes directed the powerful beam of light all around him, listening to Hans and Levente scramble through the shuttlepod's docking collar even as he inspected his new surroundings.

He was standing in a high corridor, constructed from dark textured metal and gave way to more piping at regular intervals along the passageway. At these points, lattice panels ensured that crewmembers didn't accidentally fall against high-voltage cabling.

Behind Holmes, Captain Hans emerged from the airlock door with his weapon already drawn, and shone his own torch around the long corridor as Levente followed.

"Are you detecting any lifeforms?" Hans inquired, his words seeming extremely loud in the silence of the space station.

Quickly, Holmes replaced his EM pistol and his belt in favour of a small scanning device. Quiet electronic noises issued from the scanner as its miniature sensors reached out into the darkness of the corridors.

"Negative," the director reported after a moment, "But the scanner's range is limited and this is an extremely large station. And there's no guarantee that this species' biology will even be detectable by our sensors."

Hans nodded in silent agreement, obviously aware that the genetic makeup of the galaxy's various races differed greatly. As the Pioneer continued on her course away from Earth, she would almost certainly encounter aliens more exotic than anything that humanity had encountered before.

"We need to locate a command-centre," Hans decided, "There must be a control facility somewhere onboard."

Holms concurred with the captain's assessment, but had no information as to where a command-centre would be situated. He presumed that whoever built this place would be positioned their bridge in the core of the station, but admitted that it was somewhat arrogant to base such an assumption on human standards. If he was to survive this mission hundreds of light-years from his home, he knew that such Earth biases would have to be abandoned.

Abruptly, the scanner's screen flashed with a positive reading, accompanied by a high-pitched chirp warning its user of its findings.

"What's that?" Levente asked sharply.

"A life-form reading just appeared for an instant," Holms told him, frowning at the small liquid-crystal screen, "But it's vanished again."

Hans brought up his EM pistol. "Where?" he demanded urgently.

Holms checked the scanner again. "A hundred metres," he said, pushing past the two SDF men and breaking into a brisk run down the long corridor, shining his torch to illuminate his path.

Hans and Levente followed in the scientist's wake, moving down the dark passage with their customary military precision.

Holms checked his scanner again as he ran, but whatever had been detected was no longer visible to the sensors. He charged past a corridor intersection, listening to the jarring metal noise his boots made as they impacted with the grid work of the deck.

"Distance? Hans called from behind.

"Forty metres!" Holmes shouted over his shoulder.

Suddenly, the corridor up ahead flashed green with a powerful energy discharge, and blinding sparks geysered from an overhead conduit.

"Weapons fire!" Levente snapped, skidding to a stop and sliding smoothly into a small alcove set into the bulkhead.

Holmes dove for cover in another recessed section, breathing hard as he looked at the LCD screen of his scanner. "Plasma weapons," he whispered hoarsely, wincing as the alien sidearms fired again a few dozen metres distant.

A moment later, a deep, throaty voice could be heard roaring commands in a harsh alien dialect.

The sparks issuing from the ruptured conduits provided considerable, if intermittent illumination, so all three Earth men replaced their torches on their utility belts so that they wouldn't draw attention from whoever, or whatever was up ahead.

Grasping his own weapon with both hands, the captain of the Pioneer slid out of his concealment and began to move toward the sound of commotion, keeping his back to the bulkhead as he went.

Levente swiftly changed position to the opposite side of the corridor from his commander, so that they could set up a crossfire if necessary and attack an enemy from two vectors, and followed Hans no less than two metres behind.

Steeling himself by drawing in a long breath of cool air, Holmes un-holstered his own EM pistol. His fingers wrapped around the moulded handgrip of the weapon, and as he felt its satisfying weight he emerged from the relative safety of the alcove and hurried after his crewmates.

Tense seconds passed as the trio of officers from the only Earth starship within a hundred light-years advanced toward the scene of battle, until they finally reached the doorway from where the initial weapons shot had emerged.

Holmes felt his jaw clench with anxiety as they tentatively looked around the doorframe, and saw that the entryway gave access to a high balcony in a massive cylindrical room.

The facility was easily twenty-metres high, with a diameter that was perhaps half its total height. Three balconies ran around the circumference of this huge room, each with three doors that presumably gave access to more corridors.

This place was illuminated by dim crimson lighting, and the husky alien voice could still be heard down below.

Alongside Hans, Holmes gently placed a foot out onto the balcony, careful not to alert anyone to their presence, and leaned over the handrail to see what was taking place on the lower level.

Twenty metres beneath the _Pioneer_ crewmen, Holmes could see the beastlike forms of three alien beings armed with rifle weapons. They were fierce-looking bipedal creatures, humanoid in general appearance, but with long manes of unkempt dark hair and monstrous faces that were twisted into perpetual snarls.

From his vantage point, Holmes estimated that none of these beasts was less than seven-feet tall, with muscular bodies and dirty armour that only served to enhance their terrifying appearance.

Huddled around the central console set into the lower-deck were two smaller humanoids, wiry aliens with smooth grey skin and dark eyes that dominated their hairless heads. Holmes vaguely noted that they had a similar appearance to the creatures described by people who claimed to have been abducted by alien spacecraft in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, but decided that he didn't have the luxury of exploring the possibility at that time.

The grey aliens appeared to be prisoners.

One of the looming warrior creatures was still barking commands at his two, captives in his own language, possibly trying to extract information. But the grey aliens were cowering together, obviously terrified to the point where they were unable to speak.

Hans crouched down, gesturing for his two people to lean in close to receive their instructions. "I'll take the one who's speaking," he whispered, a fierce intensity visible in his eyes, "Levente has the one on the left, Holmes has the right."

Holmes nodded, feeling the adrenalin coarse through him at an even greater rate and his heart rate increase. He felt a wave of relief move over him that Hans was going to rescue the pathetic creatures being held, but took no pleasure at the prospect of shooting someone, even a beast like the three below.

But the EM pistols that the away-team had been equipped with were primarily non-lethal weapons, although at maximum intensity they could kill a man as easily as the old plasma pistols. Shooting the aliens at a medium intensity would, in theory, incapacitate them for a few minutes and allow the away-team to secure them with restraints.

Using the handrail to steady his aim, Holmes levelled the muzzle of his stocky weapon at his target. The intimidating alien had his back to the _Pioneer_ crewmen, and appeared to be operating a computer whilst his associates handled the interrogation. Hans had, in all likelihood, made the conscious decision to give Holmes the easiest target.

"On my order," Hans said quietly, "Fire!"

Holmes squeezed the trigger of his pistol, and felt it momentarily become warm in his hands as it discharged a powerful pulse of electromagnetic energy. The bolt of energy burned across the intervening space between the weapon and target, striking the alien squarely between the shoulder blades.

Hans and Levente hit their own targets with equal precision.

But the instant they were hit by the electromagnetic pulses, the aliens spun around with their rifles raised, discharging searing beams of green power toward the upper-level.

Holmes threw himself backward from the guardrail and into Levente just as the alien weapons shots hit the balcony, tearing large holes in the metal as the away-team scrambled back into the corridor.

The creatures down in the pit were noisily exchanging commands, their heavy boots causing the decking to vibrate as they ran for the exits.

"How the hell weren't they affected by our weapons?" Levente asked, aghast at what he'd just witnessed.

"They must be a lot tougher than we are!" Holmes answered, equally stunned that their targets had barely been staggered by shots that would have incapacitated a human for at least fifteen minutes.

"That doesn't matter now!" Hans snapped, prodding at his EM pistol's controls, "Increase to maximum power!"

Holmes complied, increasing his weapon's intensity to its highest setting, a level of damage that would easily kill a human. But as they'd proved, these aliens weren't human.

"Check your scanner!" Hans ordered, "Can you locate those things?"

The EI director fumbled with the small sensor device for a moment before giving an answer. "No!" he shot back, "They're not showing up at all!"

"They're on their way up here!" Levente decided.

"Agreed," Hans said, his eyes scanning the shattered remains of the balcony just beyond the doorway, "We have to get down to those people."

Holmes shook his head. "That balcony won't support our weight."

Hans hesitated for an instant before brushing the scientist aside, reaching up and pressing his fingers into one of the grids on the wall and hefting the framework loose. Tossing the panel aside with a loud clang, the captain gripped a dense coil of wire, braced his feet against the wall and pulled.

A thick cable tore free of the bulkhead, and Hans continued with his fluid pulling motion until a good amount of wiring had collected on the deck.

"We're going to jump?" Holmes asked, shocked at what his commander was proposing.

Hans smiled wryly. "Unless you have a better idea," he confirmed, wrapping the end of the cable around a newly-exposed conduit and tying it as tightly possible. Then, he gathered up the remaining length of wire and tossed it roughly through the open doorway.

"This is insane," Holmes muttered, already becoming resigned to the fact that Hans was intent on abseiling the twenty metres to the deck below.

The captain grasped the cable with both hands, and with a final look back at his two colleagues, leapt through what remained of the balcony and out of sight.

Levente glanced up at Holmes. "After you," he prompted.

The scientist shrugged. "How kind," he commented, taking the cable in both hands and lowering himself carefully through the doorway.

Forcing himself not to look down, Holmes descended the length of cable with as much speed as he could manage. The descent took less time that he would have predicted, and as his feet made contact with the hard deck he breathed a short sigh of relief.

He turned, and saw Captain Hans standing over the two grey aliens who were now huddled together on the ground beneath the central console. Their dark eyes were staring up at the Earth captain, listening to the human's words through their small ears but unable to comprehend their meaning.

Holmes took a few steps across the deck toward them, lowering himself to one knee as he approached and scrutinising their appearance further as they in turn regarded him.

These identical beings were no more than four feet in height, with thin limbs and comparatively large heads in relation to their sinewy bodies. They wore skin-tight jumpsuits that were almost the same tone as their grey skin. Now that he was closer, Holmes could see that their skin was opaque, and that darker capillaries and muscle tissues were clearly visible beneath their surface.

"My name's Caesar Hans," the captain was saying softly, "My ship is docked at this station."

Holmes heard Levente land nearby, and as the tactical officer moved to stand beside him, he pulled the universal translator device from his belt and activated it.

The translator was a relatively new item of technology, a cylindrical object approximately ten inches in length and two in diameter, developed over the course of a century by Earth scientists. It operated by sending and comparing a subject's brainwave frequencies, and selecting concepts that were comparable between species to use as the basis of a translation.

Universal translators had originally been employed to allow different nationalities of Earth citizens to communicate when speaking in their native tongues, but with the advent of spaceflight had advanced to include several alien languages as well.

The Pioneer's sophisticated computers contained a software version of the universal translator that was in continuous operation, translating the words spoken by different nationalities of crew and even aliens who came aboard the ship.

"They need to say something in order for the translator to work," Holmes explained quietly, careful not to unnerve the frightened aliens any further, "It has to collect a sample of their language so that its software can create a translation matrix."

"They don't look very talkative," Levente observed, directing his weapon upward to guard against the inevitable return of the other aliens.

Holms agreed with the tactical officer's assessment, looking across at these cowering creatures and how pathetic they appeared trembling before him on the deck.

"We need to get these people back to the ship," Hans said, glancing up at his crewmates, "Those things could be back at any minute."

Holmes opened his mouth to respond, but before he could speak, a rapid series of clicks issued from one of the grey aliens.

Then, as suddenly as the sound had begun, it ceased.

"What did it say?" Levente asked, neglecting to specify a gender since such a determination would be extremely difficult to make this early in their encounter.

Holmes checked the readout on the universal translator. "It collected five seconds of their speech," he told them, "It's processing the words and creating a basic translation."

"How long?" Hans inquired, obviously weary of another encounter with their foes and eager to evacuate the space station.

The translator bleeped, and a positive message flashed up on its LCD screen. "It's finished," Holmes announced, tapping a control, "I'm replaying what it said."

"Nor-si-can," came the computer-synthesized voice of the long device.

Hans turned to the EI scientist. "What's that?"

Holmes shook his head. "I'm not sure," he admitted, "I think it's a proper name that doesn't have a direct translation to our language. I think it could be name of the aliens who were holding these people prisoner."

"Because this one said it after I mentioned them coming back?" Hans asked, gesturing toward the individual that had spoken.

"So why did these 'Nausicans' attack them?" Levente interjected, just as sounds of movement were heard above them.

"We'll find out later!" Hans snapped, reaching down and lifting one of the timid grey aliens into his arms, "Come on!"

Holmes hooked the translator back onto his belt and reached for the remaining alien, pushing his hands under its arms and raising it aloft. He drew the trembling creature in close to his chest, supporting its weight with his free arm and aiming his EM pistol into their air as he darted for the nearest exit with the captain.

Green beams of energy began to slam into the deck all around them, vaporising the metal grid as the Nausicans on the upper-level cried out in their severe language.

Levente, the most mobile of the away-team without one of the delicate aliens in his arms, returned fire as he ran for cover. Firing his weapon, he sent two burning pulses of electromagnetic power up through the air toward the Nausicans, slamming into the doorframe and forcing them to withdraw.

Holmes hurried through the doorway, momentarily glancing down into the alien's large ebony eyes and thinking that this was the most exotic being he'd encountered thus far in his career.

Bringing up the rear, Levente discharged another shot just as he slipped through the door and out of the large room. The pulse slammed into one of the Nausicans, hitting his chest and knocking him off balance.

The massive alien stumbled forward though what remained of the upper-balcony, falling the twenty metres in the blink of an eye and smashing into the hard deck. His body lay at an awkward angle, obviously having been killed or seriously injured in the fall.

"Which way back to the shuttle?" Captain Hans demanded, rounding a corner into another gently curving corridor and coming to an abrupt halt as he realised that he didn't know where he was going.

Holmes shifted the weight of the shivering alien so that he could replace his EM pistol and grasp his scanner, and consulted the small device's screen. "We're heading in the right direction!" he said, thankful that the scanner had recorded the away-team's movements and therefore had a directional reading back to the docked shuttlepod.

"They'll be down here in a few seconds!" Levente told them sharply, "We'd better make ourselves scarce!"

"You'll get no argument from me!" Hans agreed, scurrying down the long passage with as much finesse as possible whilst carrying one of the grey aliens.

Holmes followed close behind, relying on Levente to defend against any further Nausican attacks. In his arms, the small sentient creature looked up at his face, and made a series of shrill noises that sounded almost identical to those made by its friend.

But with the universal translator inactive on his belt, Holmes was unable to comprehend what this being was trying to communicate to him. He hoped that the alien was attempting to convey his gratitude at being rescued, to say thank you to the three Earthmen for saving them.

"Those Nausicans must have a ship docked somewhere on the station!" Levente called as they hurried down the passage in the general direction of their awaiting shuttlepod.

"Perhaps they're sheltering from the storm!" Holmes suggested, feeling the trembling of the little alien he carried diminish.

"No!" Hans shot back, leading the way through the corridor network with the first creature in his arms, "They were interrogating these people! They were looking for something!"

"Maybe our new friends can tell us!" Levente responded as the trio rounded another corner.

Raising his handheld scanner to eye-level, Holmes checked the graphic representation of this sector of the station. "There's a staircase up ahead!" he informed Hans, "Go up three levels and we should be back at the airlock!"

The captain needed no further urging, and upon sighting the narrow flight of steps changed direction and ascended them two at a time. As he led the way up the stairs, he holstered his EM pistol and removed his torch in preparation for re-entering the darkened section.

Following Hans, Holmes charged forward into the shadows near the airlock where the shuttlepod was docked. In the distance behind them, he could hear the heavy footsteps of the two remaining Nausicans drawing closer.

Upon reaching their destination, Holmes allowed himself to draw a little comfort from the welcoming lights of the shuttlepod's cockpit already visible through the docking collar.

"Get aboard!" Hans urged everyone, holding the first grey alien close to him as he clambered feet-first into the conduit connecting the shuttle to the space station, and slid gracefully through the narrow tube.

Holmes hurried to insert himself into the collar with his own rescued alien, and pushed himself through the confined space as quickly as he was able. When the artificial gravity of the small ship took hold and drew him downward, Holmes felt his legs grasped by Captain Hans who assisted his exit from the collar.

Once Holmes was safely aboard, Hans lunged toward the flight controls and dropped into the acceleration seat, his nimble fingers moving over the console to power up the shuttle.

Levente dropped through the hatch a moment later, landing with the grace of a cat before hurling himself forward and into position at the navigation console.

Holmes quickly placed the alien down in the rear passenger compartment next it its fellow, before reaching up to the overhead console and punching in a command.

"Airlock sealed!" the scientist reported as the thick panel emerged from the ceiling, "Retracting the docking collar!"

"Clamps released!" Levente confirmed, "We're floating free!"

At the helm, Hans worked the controls and the shuttlepod's thrusters flared to life, accelerating the vessel upward and away from the docking port. As the pod turned, the vast hull of the Pioneer dominated the forward viewport, black scorch marks visible where ionic discharges had struck the massive starship.

"Contact the bridge!" Hans ordered his tactical officer, "Tell them to ready the shuttlebay for our arrival."

Levente nodded an acknowledgement, his fingers composing a short message on the console before transmitting it to the looming Earth vessel.

Holms glanced down at the two grey aliens that they'd liberated from the tender mercies of the Nausicans, and both beings stared back at him with their dark eyes.

Hopefully, these little humanoids would provide some answers once they were back aboard the Pioneer.


	4. Chapter 4

CHAPTER 03 

The away-team's shuttlepod had achieved a successful docking with the great ship with the minimum of difficulty, and had even spotted the small team of Jolana Kahn's engineers working on the _Pioneer's_ stern in their bulky EVA suits during their final approach.

Under normal circumstances, lightweight garments could have been worn by the engineers, but the high-levels of radiation being generated by the ion storm forced them to employ greater precautions against injury.

Nonetheless, Svenn Holmes was confident that Kahn and her industrious Solar Defence Force and Earth Interests engineers would effectively repair the shattered exhaust port within a few hours, allowing the _Pioneer_ to resume its original course once the storm had died down.

But the quantum singularity that had been detected before the storm had hit was low on Holmes' list of priorities.

As he stood in the starship's primary sickbay, having come directly from the decontamination facility following the shuttlepod's return, Holmes found that he had become far more concerned with another encounter with the hostile Nausicans.

Sickbay itself was a spacious suite of rooms, consisting of a large ward that contained several biobeds and a surgical table, along with an adjacent science lab for medical research and a small office for the chief medical officer. In this case, that officer was Quentin Marriott, a talented individual hailing from England whose medical knowledge and bedside manner weren't matched by his interpersonal skills.

"I've performed a thorough scan on both subjects," Doctor Marriott reported briskly, rounding the primary biobed in the surgical bay, "Despite being completely unfamiliar with this species' anatomy, I can say with reasonable certainty that they're both in good health."

"None the worse from their experience with the Nausicans?" Caesar Hans inquired, folding his arms across his chest and shooting a sideways glance at Holmes. Both men stood at each other's side near the doorway, careful not to obstruct Marriot's examination of his new patients.

The two grey aliens sat together, perched on the primary surgical table as the human doctor ran several different scanning devices over their fragile bodies in an attempt to ascertain their physical condition. They had remained silent throughout the course of their examination, and had looked-around the room with an almost childlike fascination.

Marriott shook his head, replacing his medical scanner on a small equipment trolley resting nearby. "It wouldn't appear so," he confirmed, "Did you discover why these Nausicans were behaving in such a manner?"

"We think they were searching for something," Hans answered with a shrug, moving away from the doorway and approaching the two aliens, "But unless our friends here can give us any more information, we have no way knowing for certain."

Cautiously removing the synthetic gloves he wore on his hands and placing them on the equipment trolley, Marriott held out an arm to prevent the captain advancing any further toward the surgical bay where their two guests sat.

"What is it?" Hans asked quietly.

"The examination I've performed is as thorough as I'm able without resorting to more intrusive methods," the doctor told them, his voice little more than a whisper as he spoke to his colleagues, "But nonetheless I've been able to detect at least seven small implants scattered throughout their bodies."

"Implants?" Holmes repeated, his eyebrows rising in surprise.

Marriott nodded. "The implants appear to be located within vital nerve clusters," he explained, keeping his voice low, "They're constructed of an extremely dense alloy that the medical sensors are unable to penetrate, but I'm reasonably certain that they're designed to augment the central nervous system."

"To what end?" Hans asked, absently scratching his chin as he considered the new information.

"To enhance their bodies through the use of technology," Holmes said, "A little barbaric but certainly understandable if you consider how fragile they appear to be."

"There are implants deep within their aural-cavities," Marriott continued, obviously employing the term due to the fact that the aliens had small apertures in place of ears, "I believe these are used as translators."

Hans paused for a moment. "So they've been able to understand everything we've said?" he inquired.

"A rudimentary translation perhaps," the doctor told him, "But yes."

The captain turned back to the aliens. "Activate our universal-translator," he instructed Holmes.

The EI director unhooked the cylindrical device from his belt, tapping the control panel once to activate it. The translator chirped quietly as it quickly ran its automatic self-diagnostics, before calling up the translation-data collected during the previous session aboard the space station.

Holmes took a few steps toward the surgical bay, moving to stand beside Hans. "It's online," he said.

Lowing himself to one knee so that he was looking up at them, Hans spoke softly to the two aliens. "Can you understand me?"

One of the small beings opened his mouth slightly, emitting the clicking sounds that could now be recognised as their form of speech.

Since there was no discernable difference in their physical appearance, Holmes was unable to determine if the alien who had just spoken was the one who'd been carried from the station by himself or Hans.

On the translator's small screen, a confirmation message appeared that the alien speech had been detected and was in the process of being converted.

"I can," the synthesized voice of the translator repeated.

Hans exchanged glances with Holmes and Marriott before continuing to question the aliens. "Is this your space-station?" he asked them, "Why did the Nausicans attack you?"

"The station does not belong to us," the second alien said.

"The translator has collected enough of their speech to start performing real-time translations," Holmes explained quietly, impressed that the device had developed such an advanced conversion-matrix in such a short time.

"We discovered it when our vessel passed through this region of space," the other alien continued, "We boarded the station to investigate."

"And the Nausicans?" Hans prompted.

"They arrived some time later," came the response, "We attempted to conceal our presence but they discovered us."

Holmes took a step toward them, still holding the translator. "What are your names?" he inquired.

"I am Jaren," the first alien said.

"Tolem," the other replied.

"I'm Caesar Hans," the captain told them before gesturing with an arm, "This is Svenn Holmes and Quentin Marriott."

Tolem looked up at the EI director. "You participated in our rescue?"

Holmes nodded, gratified that the aliens recognised him. "That's correct," he confirmed.

"You're onboard the starship Pioneer," Hans said, "A spacecraft from a planet called Earth. We call ourselves human by species."

"We are the Tolraay," Jaren replied, "We are not familiar with either 'Earth' or 'Human'."

"That's understandable," Holmes interjected with a wry grin, "The Pioneer is the first ship constructed by our race that can achieve warp factor five. Until now we had no real means to reach this part of space."

"Warp factor five is a measurement of velocity?" Tolem asked.

Holmes realised that the Tolraay almost certainly employed different terms for such concepts.

"Warp factor five is approximately two-hundred and fourteen times the speed of light," he explained, aware that light-speed was a universal constant and would therefore be familiar to these aliens.

"Our own vessel's maximum velocity is approximately four-hundred times the speed of light," Tolem said.

Holmes paused, mentally noting that the Tolraay appeared to have technology superior to that of humans. Their advanced implants that were shielded from Doctor Marriot's sensor scans were also evidence of this technological superiority. Nonetheless, he estimated that this species' current level of technology could be equalled by Earth in less than four decades.

"Is your vessel docked elsewhere on the station?" Hans prodded.

"We lost contact with it when we detected the Nausican ship's arrival," Jaren answered, almost regretfully, "We believe that our vessel has been destroyed."

Despite their outwardly friendly manner, Holmes knew that Hans and Levente wouldn't relish the prospect of carrying more alien passengers aboard the Pioneer along with the group of Zeytraddi who were already being transported.

When the ion storm eventually died down, he would conduct a thorough scan of the vast space station to confirm that the Tolraay ship was no more.

"Bridge to sickbay!"

At the sound of Antonio Levente's urgent hail from the command centre at the pinnacle of the primary hull, the captain quickly crossed to the nearest wall console and pressed his finger against the communications panel.

"Go ahead, commander," Hans responded.

"Passive-sensors are detecting a vessel powering-up directly beneath us, sir!" the tactical officer explained urgently.

Hans spun to look directly at Holmes. "Why didn't we detect it earlier?" he demanded of the officer on the other end of the comline.

"We think it was concealed within a smaller docking bay," Levente told him, "We only noticed the increased power signature a moment ago."

"On my way!" Hans finished, gesturing for Holmes to accompany him before striding purposefully toward the exit doors.

With a parting glance at the Tolem and Jaren who both appeared anxious and confused on the primary biobed, Holmes hurried out through the already-open door panels, leaving Quentin Marriott to accommodate their new alien guests.

The EI director fell into step beside his commanding officer as crimson strips of alert lighting began to pulse throughout the great Earth starship, casting the corridor in a sinister red glow.

"Do you think the Nausicans will attack us?" Holmes asked, turning into recessed alcove that contained a turbolift junction. Since the turbolift system automatically gave priority to critical areas of the vessel such as the bridge, engine-room and sickbay, an elevator car was available for the two men without needing to be summoned.

"Bridge!" Hans commanded as the doors slid closed, before turning to his colleague and answering his question, "They certainly seem to be a hostile species. It wouldn't surprise me if they opened fire while we're stranded in this space dock with most of our systems offline."

The captain's words made Holmes realize how vulnerable the Pioneer actually was at present, encased within the docking bay of the mysterious alien station, unable to leave for fear of being destroyed by ionic discharges from the storm. If she came under attack, the ship would be a sitting duck with her weapons and defences inactive, incapable of performing any sort of evasive action.

Tense seconds passed like minutes as the turbolift car continued its ascent through the decks of the vessel from sickbay, until the door panels hissed open to reveal the compact bridge.

Hans burst from the elevator with Holmes close behind, descending the short series of steps to the command arena where Antonio Levente was already vacating the central chair.

Holmes quickly traversed the quarterdeck that encircled the perimeter of the bridge and slipped into position at the operations console, before looking over his shoulder at the pixelated image described by the viewscreen.

Despite the occasional bursts of static that burst across the viewer due to ionic interference, a blocky spacecraft was partially visible within a small docking bay, obviously having been focused upon by the Pioneer's visual sensors. The vessel appeared to be shaped almost like a blunt arrowhead, with small wings that were angled sharply downward, ending in what Holmes concluded were weapons ports.

"How large is that ship?" Captain Hans asked, lowering himself into his command chair as he scrutinised the image on the viewer.

Holmes glanced down at his sensors, and swiftly brought up the necessary details on an auxiliary monitor. "Approximately twenty-five metres in length and fifteen in height," he reported, "Mass is approximately one hundred and thirty tons."

"Weapons?" Hans prodded.

Holmes shook his head. "Sensors are unable to confirm the presence of weapons," he said, "But that doesn't mean anything."

"A ship that size could accommodate at least fifteen people," Levente interjected from his weapons console, "The three Nausicans we met on the station could have friends."

"They're launching!" Isabella Maxini announced from her position at the helm.

"All hands brace for incoming fire!" the captain roared, "Get Kahn and her people off the hull!"

Instinctively, Holmes reached for the cylindrical handholds at either side of his console, gripping them tightly as he watched the viewscreen.

Its exhaust ports discharging clouds of energetic plasma under high-pressure, the ungainly Nausican vessel gently lifted from the deck of its small bay and eased outward into the cavern where the Pioneer was moored.

As the alien craft swooped upward toward the Earth starship, the operations screens around Holmes began to flash a threat warning.

"They're charging weapons!" the EI scientist cried.

"Arm torpedoes!" Hans commanded furiously.

At that moment, the weapons emplacements on the wings of the Nausican spacecraft flared a hideous green, and twin bolts of destructive energy carved their way across space and slammed into the unshielded hull of the _Pioneer._

Holmes grasped the handholds even more securely as the vessel was hit, shuddering heavily under the successive impacts as shockwaves lanced through her spaceframe.

"Torpedoes armed!" Levente called out.

"Fire!" Hans spat, vaulting from his chair.

Holmes held his breath, preying that the ionic discharges of the storm would somehow fail to seek out the high-energy output of the _Pioneer's_ newly activated weapons system long enough for them to disable the enemy ship.

The familiar induction blast of torpedoes being ejected from their launch tubes vibrated through the starship, and the two self-guided missiles streaked away from the _Pioneer_ and arced across the vast docking bay.

By this time, the escaping Nausican spacecraft was almost directly overhead, its glowing thrusters burning at maximum to drive it clear of the station and out into the ion storm.

The torpedoes from the Earth ship were only noticed at the last second by whoever was piloting the opposing vessel, and the Nausicans barrel-rolled clear of the first torpedo's path just before it detonated harmlessly. But as the small craft recovered from its evasive manoeuvre, the second torpedo, guided by its small onboard computer, smashed into its starboard side.

On the bridge of the _Pioneer,_ Holmes and the others watched as a section of the Nausican ship blew outward in a blinding explosion of metal fragments, sending it tumbling through space trailing engine plasma and vanishing into the storm.

"Direct hit!" Levente exclaimed triumphantly.

"Shutdown weapons!" Hans snapped, obviously aware of how much danger they were in with the torpedo launchers online.

At operations, Holmes checked his multiple screens. "Scanning for the Nausican ship," he said, "It's vanished from our sensors."

The news that the Pioneer could no longer detect the alien vessel came as no surprise to anyone on the bridge, since everyone was aware that the passive-sensors functioned at no more than three-hundred metres under the conditions of the ion storm.

"Those energy discharges will take care of them now," Antonio Levente muttered coldly.

"I wouldn't be so sure," Hans shot back quickly, "The Nausicans wouldn't have tried to escape if their ship was in danger of being destroyed by the storm."

Holmes nodded in perfect agreement with the captain's assessment, impressed that Hans had reached such a conclusion.

"They've probably been in space longer than we have," Holmes pointed out, turning in his chair to address the tactical officer, "Their ship's systems could be shielded against the ion storm."

"Agreed," Hans said, "We can't afford to be complacent, the Nausicans could easily return." He began to move away from the command chair as he spoke. "Stand down from red alert."

Around them all, the scarlet lighting vanished and standard illumination was restored.

"Remain at battle stations," the captain continued, reaching for the panel on the arm of his chair and tapping a control, "Bridge to Lieutenant Kahn."

"_I'm here, sir,"_ the EI engineer replied breathlessly, the exertion of hurrying to get back inside the ship evident in her voice.

"The Nausican ship is gone for the moment," Hans explained, "Resume your repairs on our exhaust port and we'll keep monitoring space for the Nausicans."

"_Aye, sir,"_ Kahn answered, _"I'd estimate we've got another hour of work out there before we can restart the engines."_

"Understood," the captain confirmed, "Bridge out."

As he listened to the exchange between Hans and the chief engineer taking place behind him, Holmes activated another of his auxiliary monitors and called up a graphical representation of the ion storm's overall intensity. The time codes running beneath the chart gave the scientist surprising new information.

"Problem, Mr. Holmes?" Hans inquired from his command chair, apparently having noticed that his operations officer was engaged in some sort of study.

"Not a problem, captain," Holmes replied, turning slightly, "The storm's energy-level appears to be decreasing rapidly. The long-range robotic probes that the Earth Interests have sent out over the years have indicated that these ion storms vanish almost as quickly as they appear."

"So we could be underway within the hour?" Hans concluded, visibly relieved that his ship may finally be liberated from its prison in the docking bay of this vast space station.

Holmes nodded. "If the strength of the storm continues to falloff at its present rate," he said, "I'd estimate we should be clear in less than fifty minutes."

The primary conference lounge of the _Pioneer_ was a large room situated on deck two just below the command centre, a suite that had been designed to allow the senior officers aboard the starship to assemble and discuss matters that concerned either themselves or the spacecraft.

In the months preceding the _Pioneer's_ launch, during which the final proposals for this massive Earth Interests exploration vessel were still being debated by senior DeSaab design staff and EI officials, it had been agreed that such a conference facility would be a valuable addition to the ship. The EI scientists who had initiated the ambitious project to construct this vessel had agreed that such a lounge would be a necessity for their commanding officer, so that he could privately poll his officer for opinions.

Dozens of light-years from the world of their birth, this crew would encounter people and phenomena more exotic than anything they had ever dreamed, so how could any captain be expected to make decisions alone?

When the Solar Defence Force had joined the crew of the vessel, Svenn Holmes had felt a measure of relief that Caesar Hans had continued to utilize the lounge for its intended purpose. He hadn't feared the room being converted into an armoury or anything quite so drastic, but SDF mentality wasn't generally viewed as compatible with group decisions.

"I've just completed by fourth sensor-sweep of the space-station," Holmes announced, addressing the collective department heads of the starship _Pioneer_ who were seated at the long table, "I haven't detected anything that could remotely be classed as the Tolraay craft."

Less than thirty minutes earlier, the intense ion storm that had battered the vessel for hours had dispersed, allowing the crew to carefully ease the Pioneer backward and free of the docking bay into the depths of space. With most of her primary systems back online, the powerful sensor arrays of the great ship were directed down at the awesome space station beneath her, probing for insights into the technology that had built it. But perhaps more importantly, the scans had been searching for the small space-vehicle that had brought the two Tolraay to this place.

At the head of the table, Caesar Hans leaned forward in his padded chair, placing his hands on the polished surface. "No sign of debris?" he asked grimly.

Holmes looked down at small screen of his personal data assistant, the thin device bleeping softly as it interfaced with the ship's computer. "None," he confirmed, "But any wreckage would already have been dispersed by the gravitational currents of the ion storm."

"Then we have some more alien guests for the foreseeable future," Antonio Levente concluded, obviously not especially enthused by the prospect of the two Tolraay remaining aboard the ship.

Holmes decided that Levente regarded any extraterrestrial presence on the Pioneer as a security risk, but the EI scientist personally welcomed the opportunity to spend more time with Jaren and Tolem, and attempt to gain further insights into their culture and technology.

"Accommodation will have to be arranged for them," Hans decided, directing the instruction toward Levente before turning to his operations manager, "Do we have any idea where the Tolraay are from?"

Holmes shook his head. "None," he said regretfully, "I'm planning to call up some of our latest long-range astrometric scans of this region to show Jaren and Tolem later today. Hopefully they can identify some astronomical markers like red giant stars or pulsars that might be familiar to them."

The _Pioneer's_ stellar-cartography facility on deck five would allow Holmes to present the Tolraay with a high-resolution depiction of the local stellar neighbourhood on a large display screen.

The captain nodded in agreement with the proposal. "If they're from a system too far off our course toward the Zeytraddi world we may have a problem on our hands." Unwilling to dwell on the possibility of a major detour, he looked across at his chief engineer. "What's our operational status?"

Jolana Kahn pushed herself forward in her chair, clutching her own small PDA. "Repairs on the starboard exhaust port are complete," she informed everyone, "All our primary systems should be back online within the next hour, and those offline are still awaiting the completion of diagnostics."

"Did you have any problems reactivating the engine core?" Holmes inquired, aware of how difficult the procedure could be.

"The secondary plasma-injectors needed a little coaxing," Kahn told him, "But the core is online and functioning at about eighty-three percent of its usual efficiency."

Holmes had expected the starship's power plant to be operating below the efficiency that the crew was accustomed to, with the core having been left to cool for several hours before being subjected to a full restart.

"So we have warp power but nowhere to go," Isabella Maxini threw in.

"Unless we want to cart these people all the way to Zeytraddi Prime," Levente added wryly.

"I don't think so," Hans said flatly, "We have to find a conclusion to this matter and resume our mission as soon as possible." He pushed away from the table and rose to his feet. "Mr. Holmes, have our two Tolraay guests meet you in stellar-cartography, Lieutenant Maxini will assist you in locating their homeworld."

"Aye, sir," Holmes replied, shooting a sideways glance at the young Defence Force helmsman seated nearby.

"Dismissed," Hans finished, striding past his officers toward the doors to the conference lounge with Levente and Kahn following in short order.

The spacious stellar-cartography lab was completely unoccupied when Svenn Holmes entered, as he had expected during the turbolift journey from the conference lounge. With most of the combined Earth Interests and Solar Defence Force crew having been assigned engineering duties such as running thorough diagnostics on shipboard systems, scientific operations like interstellar charting had been abandoned for the next few hours.

Stellar-cartography itself was a large suite designed to help fulfil the _Pioneer's_ original mandate to chart the vast region of space that surrounded Earth, allowing the Earth Interests to construct highly-detailed astrometric maps. Even the _Kepler,_ the most powerful subspace telescope in orbit of Earth, and numerous low-warp robotic probes, were unable to compete with a high-warp exploration starship for collecting data.

"Our most recent astrometric sensor-sweeps were conducted just before we were hit by the ion storm," Holmes told his colleague as they entered the lab, surveying the rows of auxiliary monitors running either side of him along the bulkheads, and the large inactive primary screen directly ahead.

Positioned before the main screen was the central console, a control-station with seating for two people, from which the stellar cartographers could manipulate the incoming sensor data and call up their findings in visual form.

Isabella Maxini slipped into the second chair, swiftly tapping a command sequence into the nearest keypad. "Activating stellar-cartography systems," she told him crisply.

Holmes allowed the helm officer to initialise the necessary systems, while he seated himself and accessed the astrometric databanks. But even as he entered the commands to retrieve the desired files from the computer, he was aware of the uncomfortable silence that had descended over the lab.

The EI director realised that out of all the command staff aboard the Earth vessel, Maxini was the person who he'd spent the least time with. With the whirlwind of events that had culminated in the _Pioneer_ being sent on its odyssey to Zeytraddi Prime, and the ship's encounter with a primitive world some days earlier, Holmes had been granted very little time to associate with the rest of the crew. And even when he found himself with a few hours of time to relax, he generally spent them alone in his quarters or with other EI officers who shared his interests.

Lieutenant Maxini was a Solar Defence Force pilot, a hardened soldier who had fought for her world on many occasions during the terrifying Orion attacks. Like the majority of people who fought in the SDF, Maxini generally considered the depths of the galaxy to be a place where hostile aliens lurked in every solar system, awaiting Earth to let down its guard before launching an invasion. As a member of the Earth Interests, it was Svenn Holmes' belief that the benefits of learning the secrets of the universe and encountering new life, vastly outweighed the risks of space exploration.

Nonetheless, Holmes didn't consider himself to be an unsociable man, and had always found himself able to understand the SDF's xenophobic views if not being in agreement with them.

"You've been aboard for a few weeks now," Holmes said finally, striving to break the awkward silence, "What do you think of the _Pioneer?"_

"You've built a good ship, director," Maxini replied briskly, neglecting to look up from her controls, "Although she's about as manoeuvrable as a space dock compared to the craft I'm accustomed to flying."

Holmes' eyebrows rose sharply in response, attempting to banish the feeling that the helmsman's harsh words were meant as an attack on him personally. He had put so much effort into helping develop and construct this starship, that he found it extremely difficult not to be offended by statements that highlighted the _Pioneer's_ shortcomings.

"If I'm correct," Holmes began, recalling what little he'd read of her service-record, "Your previous flight experience is piloting the 'Bulldog' fighters that the SDF use. The _Pioneer_ is a massive exploration vessel, hundreds of metres in length and carrying more momentum at full speed than a small asteroid."

Maxini's thin lips became a wry grin as she listened to his words. "I didn't mean to offend you," she retorted, "I know that this ship has been your entire life for the last couple of years."

"I wouldn't quite describe it that way," Holmes said quietly, inwardly grimacing at how accurate the woman's statement actually was.

Maxini chuckled to herself. "After two years flying this monster to Zeytraddi and back, I doubt I'll ever be able to pilot a Bulldog again."

Holmes smiled, finding himself warming to her already. "Don't underestimate yourself," he told her, "I've overseen the development of this ship from the initial pencil-sketches to the final coat of resistance gloss on her hull, I know she isn't the easiest ship to pilot."

"I'll get used to it," Maxini assured him, taking a long pause, "Eventually."

At that moment, the doors directly behind them hissed open.

Holmes turned in his chair, regarding the young Defence Force security guard who was standing in the doorway, his EM pistol holstered at his side.

"I've escorted the Tolraay as ordered, director," the newcomer explained briskly, "Should I show them in?"

"Please," Holmes confirmed, instinctively rising to greet the two guests.

The SDF guard stepped aside, revealing the small grey aliens who were standing beside each other in the corridor. Tentatively, their large eyes absorbing the appearance of this new area of the Earth starship, the visitors stepped inside stellar-cartography. The tops of their smooth heads barely measured up to the security guard's chest as they edged past him.

Holmes stepped forward to welcome them, offering a warm smile as he resisted the impulse to lower himself to one knee. Despite their size, he was aware that the Tolraay were mature members of their species, and was careful not to treat them as he would human children.

"Svenn Holmes," Jarem observed.

"That's right," Holmes confirmed, recognising Jarem purely due to the fact that his pale skin was slightly darker than Torem's, "This is Lieutenant Maxini."

"Hello," the helmsman said with a slightly forced smile.

"We'd like to show you some maps of this region," the EI director explained, gesturing for the security guard in the doorway to leave, "Dismissed."

The SDF officer inclined his head in silent acknowledgement, stepping back into the corridor and allowing the door panel to slide back into place.

"We will comply," Tolem answered after a brief glance of confirmation with his fellow.

"It isn't a question of compliance," Holmes said quickly, concerned that the Tolraay felt that they were being pressurized into assisting the humans, "We simply want to locate your homeworld so that we can take you home."

"We understand," Jarem assured him.

Holmes turned back to the central console, remaining on his feet as he manipulated the controls. "This is our current position," he informed everyone, a quiet hum emanating from the large primary screen as it powered up from standby mode.

An image quickly formed from harsh pixels, displaying a high-resolution image of the stars clustered around the _Pioneer._ A thin line carved its way across the screen, denoting the starship's course toward its eventual destination almost eleven months distant, with a flashing red highlight that indicated its position at that moment in time.

"You're looking at our most recent astrometric scan of this sector," Holmes said, "It was conducted just before we encountered the ion storm." He looked back at the two Tolraay. "Do you recognise any of the stars?"

"We do not," Jarem replied, almost regretfully, "Our vessel was far from home when it was caught in the storm."

Holmes sighed. The current astrometric representation on the main screen displayed space out to a radius of eight light-years from the _Pioneer,_ so the Tolraay world obviously wasn't situated in the immediate vicinity.

Isabella Maxini tapped at a keypad, accessing the magnification controls. "I'm calling up a larger radius," she said, "Our long-range scans have detected the presence of solar systems at a maximum of eleven light-years, although we don't have any information about them."

On the screen, the image abruptly zoomed out so that a greater region of space became visible. In the upper-right corner, the edge of an azure nebula could be seen.

"There," Tolem spoke up, pointing with a thin arm, "That phenomenon is known to our people as _K'Urat._ Many centuries ago on our world, it was worshipped by several primitive civilisations as a deity."

Holmes scrutinised the visual depiction of the large cloud of dust and gas, glancing down at his controls in search of more data. "It appears to be a class two nebula," he muttered, recalling the various nebulae that the Earth Interests had studied via the Kepler since its launch six years earlier, "Is your homeworld beyond this _K'Urat?"_

Jarem nodded his large head. "Our planet is located on its perimeter," he told the humans.

"Eleven light-years," Maxini concluded with a short sigh, "Seven light-years off our present course." She glanced at her colleague. "It'll take us a few weeks to cover the distance between here and that nebula."

"But we don't appear to have much choice," Holmes responded, "Jarem and Tolem need to be taken home, and the detour would give us the opportunity to study a class two nebula at close range."

"Great," Maxini commented dryly.

Holmes smiled at the soldier's complete lack of enthusiasm at the prospect of examining the dust cloud. "Let's inform the captain," he said.


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER 04 

On deck four of the starship _Pioneer,_ Caesar Hans slept soundly in his quarters duty stations. The spacious cabin, one of the largest aboard the vessel as befitted his position as commanding officer, was completely dark but for the starlight that seeped in through the circular viewports, silent but for the subtle throb of the mighty warp engines many decks below.

All around him, the only Earth spacecraft to have travelled so far from the planet of its birth sped deeper into unknown space at a brisk warp four. Its eventual destination, a vast nebula at the edge of sensor-range, was many weeks distant.

The tranquillity of the large suite was total, until the trill of an intercom call shattered the silence like a foghorn slicing through an ocean mist.

"_Bridge to Caesar Hans."_

The captain was roused from the inviting realm of unconsciousness by the voice of his tactical officer and most trusted associate aboard the solitary Earth vessel, and quickly rolled into a sitting position.

"This is Hans," he responded, cringing ever so slightly at the sound of weariness in his own voice, "Go ahead, commander."

"_I'm sorry to disturb you, captain,"_ Antonio Levente apologised quickly before continuing, _"But we're approaching what appears to be the site of a battle. There's a heavily-damaged alien ship drifting nearby."_

Hans rubbed his eyes and swung his legs off the bed, feeling the cool carpeted deck beneath his bare feet as he stood up. "Acknowledged, commander," he said, reaching for the uniform that he'd placed on the back of a nearby chair the previous evening, "Bring us out of warp nearby, but keep our distance from the damaged vessel, their opponent may still be in the vicinity."

"_Aye, captain,"_ Levente confirmed, _"Bridge out."_

Less than four minutes after the ship's powerful long-range navigational sensors had detected the debris field and alien spacecraft lying in the _Pioneer's_ flight-path, Caesar Hans strode from the rear turbolift alcove and onto the upper-deck of his bridge.

As was his custom, he visually surveyed the large room as he descended to toward the central command-arena where his chair was located, and was pleased to note that most of his senior staff had already assumed their customary positions in the light of Commander Levente's find.

"Slowing to sublight," Isabella Maxini reported from her helm console ahead of the command chair, "Ion drives at reverse thrust."

The captain braced himself for the inevitable drop from the subspace realm that permitted flight at faster-than-light warp velocities, tensing as a vibration moved through the deck beneath him.

The inertial dampers that were designed to neutralize the sensation of movement strained against the tremendous deceleration from warp factor four to a relative stop, working in conjunction with the structural integrity forcefields and physical support bulkheads to keep the starship in one piece.

Once again, the fabric of the galaxy was torn apart just ahead of the _Pioneer's_ bow, creating a momentary confluence of subspace and 'normal' space that allowed the vessel to return to the continuum where she belonged. Her sublight engines began discharging their immense ion thrust in reverse, battling against the tremendous momentum that the spacecraft had carried out of warp.

On the main viewing screen, Hans watched the elongated white chalk marks that had become familiar to him as being warp-stars, transform into distant pinpricks of light. The _Pioneer_ now hung many light-years from the nearest solar system, drifting in the desolate interstellar void between the stars.

"Activating short-range sensors," Svenn Holmes announced from the operations console.

But even as the Earth Interests director spoke, Caesar Hans could see the sparkling debris field that lay ahead of the Earth ship, and the looming mass of a sinister alien spacecraft suspended toward starboard.

The vessel was slowly spinning on its central axis, scarlet tendrils of plasma radiating from the shattered engine nacelles suspended beneath its hull on delicate support pylons. Vast sections of its protective outer skin had been blown away entirely by enemy weapons fire, presumably contributing to the field of wreckage that had collected nearby. Dozens of dirty black scorch-marks marred the few hull plates that had been left intact during the battle.

But despite the vessel being so heavily damaged, Caesar Hans had assisted the Solar Defence Force in repelling countless attacks by its kind. Despite the fact that Earth's deadliest enemy had largely employed unmanned probes to attack the human outposts situated throughout the Sol system, the captain could recognise the hallmarks of this alien species.

"Red alert!" Hans commanded. The ambient lighting dimmed in immediate response, followed by the activation of the pulsing crimson strips around the bridge.

"An Orion starship?" Antonio Levente marvelled, obviously shocked by the image portrayed on the viewer.

"I didn't realise they had influence out this far," Maxini added.

"Apparently neither did someone else," Hans told her quietly, his eyes locked on the drifting enemy vessel as he issued his next order, "Run a full sensor-sweep of the Orion craft, I want to know if there's anyone left aboard her."

Holmes manipulated his sensor controls, his face bathed in the glow of the alert lights. "No lifesigns that I can detect," he reported, "But I'm showing biomass readings throughout the ship that appear to be dead bodies. It looks like they all died from radiation poisoning after their fusion core was damaged in the attack."

"I won't be shedding any tears over those deaths," Levente muttered harshly, his disdain for this barbaric race of beings audible in his voice.

No one on the bridge appeared to disagree with the sentiment.

"Neither will I, Mr. Levente," Hans agreed, folding his arms across his uniformed chest, "And I think we have a good idea who was responsible for ridding us of these Orions."

"The Nausicans from the space station?" the tactical officer offered.

Hans nodded.

"According to my analysis," Holmes interjected, "The amount of debris I'm detecting isn't sufficient to indicate that a second vessel was destroyed. If the Nausicans did defeat this Orion ship, it was a fight they managed to walk away from."

"So they're still out there," the captain concluded, "Scan space out to maximum range, see if you can detect the Nausican vessel."

"Scanning," Holmes acknowledged, "I'm not detecting any other spacecraft, but there's a faint ion trail leading away along a bearing of zero-two-seven mark one."

"Are there any planetoids in that direction?" Hans asked, his question automatically encompassing worlds, asteroids or any other space borne bodies that could provide shelter for a damaged ship. Of course, if the Nausicans had rendezvoused with a larger vessel capable of sustaining a higher warp speed, then they could be many light-years distant by now.

Holmes surveyed his operations console for a moment before responding. "Yes," he confirmed, "A small solar system with two planets orbiting a G2 star. The second planet appears to have a habitable atmosphere. It looks like the only safe haven within seven light-years if their life-support systems were failing."

"That system is less than two days from here at warp four-point five," Isabella Maxini interjected.

Hans frowned, slightly taken aback by his helmsman's statement. "You're assuming that it's my intention to go after the Nausicans?" he inquired.

"That's correct, captain," Maxini responded confidently.

The captain felt his jaw clench in frustration, resisting the impulse to issue a reprimand to the young woman for second-guessing him. But he was also unable to banish the anger that burned within him over the brutal treatment of the Tolraay by the three Nausicans back on the space station. One of those hulking aliens had paid for his crimes with his life, killed by a twenty-foot fall after being hit by Antonio Levente's EM shot.

Although it hadn't been the humans' intention to kill the Nausican, Hans felt very little remorse about the alien's death. He was aware that he was in command of a ship that was many light-years from home, operating in a region of the galaxy that was completely inaccessible to every other Earth vessel, and was therefore unable to bring every criminal to justice. Nonetheless, Hans would prefer not to let the remaining two Nausicans simply escape any consequences to their actions on the station.

But how far could he allow his search for justice to drive him? Despite only having known about the existence of the Nausican species for a few hours, it was obvious to Hans and everyone aboard the _Pioneer_ that they were a fearsome race of warriors, armed with powerful military technology. The small Nausican vessel had already destroyed the Tolraay spacecraft and crippled a formidable Orion warship, and Hans was concerned about allowing the _Pioneer_ to become their third kill of the day.

Hans sympathised with the plight of his Tolraay guests, but he wasn't sure if he should place his crew in danger by pursuing the Nausicans.

"The Nausican ship has almost certainly suffered heavy damage, captain," Antonio Levente pointed out, the bridge having fallen silent as the bridge officers awaited their commander's decision, "Based on what we saw back at the space-station I think we could overpower them."

Hans scratched his chin, running his fingers over the coarse stubble beard that had grown since the previous night. The eyes of his senior staff were upon him, silently willing him to issue his orders. His analysis of the situation matched Levente's, he had also concluded that the Pioneer could overwhelm the injured Nausican vessel with relative ease, but the Earth ship would incur damage nonetheless. How much was he prepared to risk in order to capture the Nausicans?

"Captain?" Levente prompted expectantly.

Hans drew in a long breath of air before speaking, finally reaching a decision and advancing toward the helm. "Set a course for that solar system," he instructed Maxini, "Warp four-point-five."

Maxini smiled, enthusiastically tapping the appropriate controls on her board. "Course set," she reported.

"What about the Orions?" Svenn Holmes interjected from the upper-deck, "Aren't we going to notify them about what happened here?"

Hans decided that they had nothing to loose by informing the Orions, but only if the exchange of information could be carried out in an indirect manner.

"What if we launch a communications buoy?" Levente suggested, "It could be configured to broadcast a short message on all subspace-frequencies. It might take some time but I'm sure that another Orion ship or listening-post would receive it sooner or later."

Hans gave him a short nod of confirmation. "Launch the buoy," he ordered, "Advising them about this ship is more than they deserve anyway."

The tactical officer punched a command-sequence into one of his keypads. "It's away," he told everyone, "Transmitting on all available frequencies."

The captain placed a hand on Maxini's shoulder, looking up at the viewscreen. "Take us out of here, lieutenant," he said calmly, "Full ion thrust until we clear the debris field."

The helmsman pressed the necessary controls, and the _Pioneer_ eased away into the night as her sublight engines roared into life. In a heartbeat the Earth ship left the stricken Orion vessel, now no more than a floating tomb for its deceased crew, thousands of kilometres behind.

A dozen light-years from the skies of Earth where she'd been constructed, the starship _Pioneer_ soared through the darkness of space, propelled by continuum-distortion engines generations more advanced than those developed by Zefram Cochrane in the 2060s. In just over ninety years since the initial flight of the _Pheonix_, the prototype warp vessel that had attracted the attention of a Vulcan research ship, humanity had developed an engine that could travel four hundred times faster.

In centuries gone by, even the most noted physicists on Earth had dismissed travel at the speed of light as impossible, concluding that such a velocity could never be achieved in a universe that obeyed Einsteinian laws of relativity. Einstein had maintained as a vessel accelerated toward the one billion kilometres per hour of light-speed, the slower perceived time became until it ceased altogether. But Cochrane had discovered a means by which this law could be bypassed.

Every Earth vessel constructed with a continuum-distortion, or 'warp' drive, was a testament to the work of Cochrane, but the _Pioneer_ even more so. Even the incredible velocity of a billion KPH, at which point one could race light itself, was a mere crawl compared to the two hundred billion that the _Pioneer_ could attain.

As Caesar Hans stood on the observation deck of this remarkable spacecraft, he realised how he had come to take for granted what a monumental achievement of science and engineering the _Pioneer_ actually was.

The captain maintained his customary relaxed stance, legs apart with arms folded across his chest, absorbing the majesty of the stars that moved past the vast viewports. At the point where a ship accelerated to light-speed and beyond, these immense orbs of nuclear energy became nothing more than thin arrows, lancing swiftly away into the void of space.

Hans had viewed this spectacle dozens of times during his lifetime aboard spacecraft, since any ship equipped with warp engines was party to it, but he had never seen the stars shoot past with such furious intensity as they did aboard the _Pioneer._

But in the last few hours, the starship had abandoned its continuing mission to transport the Zeytraddi refugees back to their homeworld, a planet located in a solar system almost twelve months from Earth even aboard this prototype vessel. The only Earth ship to have travelled this far from Sol was on another mission, a task that its crew had undertaken by themselves to seek out two Nausicans and bring them to justice.

"Captain?" a voice said from behind him.

Hans spun around, snapped from the privacy of his own thoughts, and regarded the newcomer who had entered the spacious observation lounge. Svenn Holmes stood in the doorway.

"I thought I might find you here," the EI director told him, stepping over the threshold and allowing the twin panels to slide closed.

Hans turned back to the vast viewing ports that formed the forward bulkhead, staring back out at the unimaginable vastness of the universe. "What can I do for you, Mr. Holmes?" he asked, secretly glad of the interruption.

Holmes advanced on the captain, moving to stand at his side as he absorbed the fantastic vista for himself.

"I used to come here often myself during the construction period," the scientist began, ignoring the query regarding his presence. "I found it to be a place where I could focus on a problem that had developed with the ship in almost complete privacy."

"Is that so?" Hans muttered wryly.

Holmes nodded. "Since the observation deck doesn't contain any systems other than some emergency communications equipment, it wasn't frequented by the construction crews. I was able to hide here for hours."

The captain detected the unspoken message in the operations manager's words, and glanced across at him. "You think I'm hiding?"

Holmes shrugged. "Are you?"

Hans sighed, deciding that it would do very little harm to confide in this man. "I've been considering contacting SDF command back on Earth," he admitted quietly, "I'm not sure if they'd approve of this course of action with those Nausicans."

In the last few hours since the _Pioneer_ had encountered the shattered hulk of the Orion vessel, Captain Hans had retired to his private ready-room adjacent to the main bridge. Those hours had passed slowly, during which he had resisted the impulse to instruct Antonio Levente to open a subspace communications channel back to SDF Headquarters on Earth.

Despite the ship being twelve light-years from home, the network of subspace booster stations surrounding the Sol system could relay a message to Admiral Cohen, Hans' immediate superior. The small unmanned communications satellites had been sent out from Earth two decades earlier, designed to allow spacecraft operating within the three light-year range to send messages home.

Since the Zeytraddi mission was unprecedented, no one was certain how much longer the network could permit the exchange of information between the _Pioneer_ and Earth, but Holmes had estimated that it would be no longer than three weeks if they remained on their present course.

Beside him, Holmes appeared to consider the dilemma. "The Tolraay appear to have developed impressive technology," he said, "Those implants Doctor Marriott detected are at least twenty years in advance of anything human medicine has to offer."

Hans frowned, not quite understanding the point that the operations manager was trying to make. "Meaning?" he prompted.

"If we can capture the two Nausicans who held Jarem and Tolem hostage on the space station," Holmes continued, "It could go a long way to forging an alliance between Earth and the Tolraay. Despite our recent alliance with the Traygon the SDF is still eager to make friends out here, and an exchange of technologies with the Tolraay would be extremely beneficial to mankind."

"So by pursuing the Nausican ship," Hans replied, narrowing his gaze at the other man as he began to comprehend what was being said, "We could be building the foundations for an alliance?"

Holmes nodded. "I can certainly imagine Admiral Cohen and your other SDF superiors seeing it that way," he confirmed, "At least after the mission has been completed successfully."

"You don't think I should contact them?" Hans asked.

"Not until we have the Nausicans in custody and are in orbit of the Tolraay homeworld," the EI director said, "This far from Earth and the subspace relay network, we can simply tell them that we were unable to transmit a message prior to embarking on the mission."

Hans smiled. "I didn't realise how little respect you had for authority," he told him quietly.

Holmes inclined his head in silent agreement, before withdrawing from the captain's side and heading out of the observation lounge. "Only when it's necessary," he conceded.

For nearly two days, the _Pioneer_ traversed the vast distance between the shattered hulk of the Orion warship and the small planetary system, her vast array of sensors monitoring the path of the faint ion trail that was believed to have been generated by the Nausican vessel.

Now, as the Earth starship began to draw nearer to the system where the ion trail appeared to lead, Caesar Hans summoned his senior staff to their customary positions in the command centre. With the _Pioneer_ facing a possible assault by the alien spacecraft, the captain demanded that his best people surround him, never feeling comfortable with anyone else manning the bridge's various duty stations.

"The ion trail has completely dispersed," Svenn Holmes announced from his operations console, scrutinising the multiple sensor-monitoring screens as his spoke, "It looks like the ship dropped to sublight nearby."

At the helm, Isabella Maxini glanced over her shoulder the _Pioneer_ began to infringe on the periphery of the solar system. "We're approaching the second planet, captain."

Captain Hans leaned forward in his command chair, narrowing his gaze at the main viewscreen. "Bring us out of warp, lieutenant," he ordered.

Maxini reached for the appropriate cluster of controls on her console, entering the necessary commands.

Beneath Hans, the massive starship shuddered as it threw off its warp field and leapt from the faster-than-light realm of subspace, her ion engines firing at full reverse thrust.

The vast globe of a habitable planet abruptly appeared within the viewscreen, a stunning world that appeared to be a more idyllic sister of Earth. The shallow azure seas that dominated the planet's surface seemed to glow with an inner-radiance, sparkling in the light of the solar system's central star. Long swathes of islands that appeared to be archipelagos were clearly visible even from the _Pioneer's_ distant vantage point, all clustered around the principal landmass, a relatively small continent no larger than Australia on Earth.

Encircling the planet's equator, was a wide ring of asteroidal and commentary debris.

"Report?" Hans asked finally, satisfied that the bridge crew had sufficiently absorbed the beautiful image of this alien world.

"It's remarkably like Earth, captain," Svenn Holmes reported, examining his sensor readings, "Right down to the ambient temperature and dispersal of atmospheric gasses."

"Almost like being home," Antonio Levente commented.

Hans shared the tactical officer's opinion. "I wouldn't request shore-leave privileges yet," he said over his shoulder, looking back at the viewscreen, "Is this planet inhabited?"

Holmes shook his head. "Long-range sensors aren't picking-up any biosigns on the surface," the scientist told him, reaching for a specific monitor and adjusting its display, "And I'm still not detecting any indication of recent spaceflight activity anywhere in the system with the exception of the Nausican ion trail."

"Continue scanning for the Nausican ship," Hans instructed him, "It could be concealed in a low orbit around one of the planets or behind the sun." He pushed himself to his feet. "Are there any signs of wreckage on the surface?"

"I've implemented a standard search-pattern," Holmes said, "But it'll take at least ten hours to perform a thorough scan of the entire planet."

Hans frowned, unwilling to remain above this world for such a length of time. "Then restrict your scan to the central continent," he replied, "If that ship was forced into making an emergency-landing it'd make sense for them to come down there."

"Captain, we're entering orbit," Maxini reported, adjusting her helm controls as she spoke.

"Move us into a geo-synchronous position above the area being scanned, lieutenant," Hans ordered, looking to Holmes as he impatiently awaited the results of the scan.

"The sensors just detected a metallic object," the EI director announced finally, "There's no way is can be a natural construct on an uninhabited planet."

Hans needed no further urging. "I'm taking a landing party to the surface," he informed everyone briskly, "Mr. Holmes will remain in command until I return, Commander Levente and two marines will accompany me."

Holmes slipped from his chair at the operations console. "I think I should go with you," he stated curtly.

"This isn't a scientific expedition," Hans retorted, ascending the steps toward the nearest turbolift, "It's a military operation to apprehend two criminals, you can remain here and monitor our progress."

Holmes drew a long breath of exasperation, aware that an argument would do little to further his cause. "Understood," he sighed.

With Levente at his side, Hans stepped into the turbolift car. "Launchbay!"

When the initial concept of a long-range exploration vessel had been conceived of by the Earth Interests, it had become evident that a major part of its mission would involve visiting the surface of many alien planets. Despite the impressive array of biological, meteorological and geological sensors designed to obtain information about these distant worlds, close-range exploration was still necessary, and an entirely new generation of small auxiliary spacecraft had been created by the EI and DeSaab.

As the _Pioneer_ itself was constructed in orbit above Earth, some of humanity's most talented shipwrights had designed a variety of prototypes for these compact vessels that they termed 'shuttlepods'. Following an exhaustive series of atmospheric and sub-orbital test-flights at an EI facility in Arizona, the most suitable vessel had been chosen by the EI board of directors.

Antonio Levente now found himself at the helm controls of one of these shuttlepods for the second time in two days, fastened in his acceleration seat by twin straps of restraint webbing. An accomplished pilot, the tactical officer deftly manipulated the flight-controls as the small ship successfully launched from the _Pioneer's_ docking bay.

The particular pod wasn't the one that had conveyed Levente, Svenn Holmes and Caesar Hans to and from the mysterious alien space station, but rather its identical counterpart that was generally housed alongside. As per its operational protocols, the Earth starship always maintained two shuttlepods at standby for immediate launch. The vessel also carried a pair of backup pods that had were only partially assembled and held in storage, intended to be made operational within twenty hours by the _Pioneer's_ engineers if the need arose.

"I'm scanning our landing coordinates," Captain Hans said, tapping commands into the navigation console.

Levente glanced sideways at the incoming sensor data for only an instant, concentrating instead on piloting the shuttle downward.

In the viewport before him, this alien planet a dozen light-years from the world of his birth loomed large, its vast azure oceans glistening as the shuttlepod approached. This marbled orb suspended in space was dominated by water, giving it an appearance that was significantly different from that of Earth.

Nonetheless, Levente was unable to fully suppress the unfamiliar sensation of homesickness, and a longing for everything he'd become accustomed to throughout his three decades of life. Even the frightening Orion attacks on the Sol system had been fought on familiar territory, a place where he knew every colony and spaceport from Mercury to Pluto. The entire system could be crossed in under two days even at sublight speeds.

To be twelve light-years out was an entirely different matter, a distance that even light itself required well over a decade to traverse.

Banishing his thoughts of Earth, Levente forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand, focussing on the instrumentation laid out before him. A proximity alarm chirped quietly, alerting him to the sudden disappearance of the massive Earth ship from the pod's short-range sensors.

Fearful of a Nausican attack, the Pioneer had stationed herself in a high orbit approximately fifty thousand kilometres above the surface of this planet. If the hostile aliens were concealed somewhere took the opportunity to strike the exploration vessel, the Pioneer would be unhindered by a low orbit and could swiftly escape.

"We're moving out of range of the ship," Levente reported, tapping a command into a nearby keypad to inform the shuttlepod computer to acknowledge the sensor alert.

At the navigation console beside the helm, Caesar Hans was scrutinising multiple displays. "Continue our descent," he said quickly, not looking up from his instruments as he adjusted a series of dials to improve sensor-resolution.

"Altitude is one thousand kilometres and decreasing," the tactical officer informed him, looking up at the beautiful globe that could no longer be seen in its entirety from the shuttlepod. Instead, only the immense curve of the world's atmosphere was visible, the wide ring of asteroidal debris providing a stunning backdrop against space.

Levente had performed re-entry manoeuvres in many different spacecraft during his lifetime, generally piloting ships down to the surface of Earth but sometimes encountering more turbulent and dense planetary atmospheres like that of Venus. Since this new planet was so remarkably like his homeworld, Levente anticipated very little difficulty in successfully touching-down.

"I'm scanning our landing coordinates," Hans informed him, tapping a sequence of commands into his navigation console.

Levente glanced across at the incoming sensor data for only an instant, instead concentrating on piloting the shuttlepod on its downward course. The _Pioneer's_ sensors had been unable to determine if the unnatural object that'd been detected was the Nausican vessel, but the captain was obviously attempting to perform a more detailed scan now that the shuttlepod was much closer to the surface.

Hans shook his head. "I still can't establish that what we're detecting is Nausican wreckage," he muttered in defeat, "And there are no biosigns within sensor-range."

Another sensor alarm sounded from the helm console, drawing Levente's attention to the fact that the shuttlepod was beginning to encounter this world's atmosphere.

At one hundred and thirty kilometres from the surface, approximately equivalent to Earth, the auxiliary vessel from the _Pioneer_ began to enter the thermosphere. This was the thinnest level of atmospheric gasses that surrounded most planets, a cold and airless realm that was the final solace for spacecraft before they entered the complete void of space.

"Altitude is now one hundred kilometres," Levente said, feeling a subtle vibration begin to move through the shuttlepod as its hull was exposed to greater levels of atmospheric friction.

The planetary continent that had been designated as their eventual destination now dominated the forward viewport, an expansive green and mustard landmass stretching out across the vast azure seas. Only a handful of silky white clouds above some coastal and mountainous regions gave any indication of this world's weather system.

As he adjusted the flight controls again to compensate for the denser atmosphere, Levente absently decided that there were worse places to crash-land a starship.

But as the shuttlepod descended beneath the planet's outer thermosphere and into the deeper mesosphere, a series of quiet sensor alarms issued from the consoles that surrounded the two SDF officers. Caesar Hans scrutinised the navigation screens before him and frowned curiously, obviously attempting to understand the incoming sensor data being displayed.

"What is it?" Levente asked, glancing across at the accompanying control console as he continued to pilot the pod downward.

"I'm not sure," the captain said, tapping commands into his terminal, "There's some sort of electromagnetic disturbance in the lower-atmosphere, but I can't localise it."

Levente looked up at the viewports, visually scanning the terrain beneath them for some clue as to the nature of this disturbance. Of course, his eyes could detect nothing at such a height, for the shuttlepod was still over fifty kilometres from the surface.

"Is it an atmospheric phenomenon?" the tactical officer inquired.

Hans shook his head. "I don't know what it is," he admitted, "But if it's being artificially-generated by someone it could be intended to prevent us landing here. We can't rule out Nausican involvement."

Levente looked across at his commanding officer with a serious expression. "Should I abort the descent?"

Hans opened his mouth to respond, but before he could speak he obviously noticed something in his peripheral vision. His head snapped around toward the main viewport ahead of them, and he narrowed his gaze at something he'd spotted far below.

Levente squinted at a point on the planet surface, where he could just make out a dark patch beginning to swell in size. His instinctive response was to class this black object as a vessel rising from the ground, possibly the Nausican starship lifting off, but he quickly dismissed the conclusion. Whatever this thing was, it was gaining altitude with a strange undulating motion that marked it as something other than a spacecraft.

"What is it?" Levente marvelled, already entering the appropriate commands for a return to orbit.

Hans surveyed the sensor monitors briefly. "Whatever it is," he said as he adjusted his controls, "It has to be the source of the electromagnetic disturbance."

"I'm taking us up!" Levente reported curtly, banking the shuttlepod had to starboard with the intention of pulling the ship into a steep climb out of the stratosphere and back into space. Both men were forced deeper into their acceleration seats, feeling their restraint webbing tighten automatically to secure them as the pod was driven swiftly upward.

"The disturbance is gaining altitude!" the captain announced tensely, frantically tapping at his navigation console, "It's now twenty kilometres from the surface!"

Fighting against the increased gravity, Levente brought the nose of the shuttlepod up with effort and fired the atmospheric thrusters at full power. The harsh manoeuvre strained the little vessel's structure, but within seconds the craft was soaring upward.

"Disturbance is at forty kilometres!" Hans called over roar of the atmosphere streaming past the outer hull, "It's catching us!"

Levente felt his chest tighten, realised that he was holding his breath and forced himself to breathe out as his fingers moved over the helm controls. "We're climbing as fast as we can!" he snapped, a little more angrily than he had intended, "Can you contact the _Pioneer?"_

"The electromagnetic disturbance is interfering with communications!" Hans told him quickly, "It's jamming all subspace and radio communications with the ship!"

Levente cursed under his breath, furious at being chased away from this planet by such a phenomenon, but even as he did so watched as his console abruptly went dark. He gasped, just as the controls lit up again before flickering erratically. Around him, every monitor in the pod spluttered with static.

"We're in trouble!" Levente cried, feeling the force of the rapid ascent begin to vanish as the shuttle's engines died.

As the onboard flight computers detected the sudden reduction in thrust and declining altitude, a pulsing alarm began to vibrate through the small cockpit.

"Engines are offline!" Hans shouted frantically, grasping the limb of his console for support as the ship began to tumble into a terrifying suicide dive, "That disturbance is affecting all our systems!"

Feeling the blood already beginning to rush from his brain as the intense g-forces took hold of the plummeting shuttle, Levente desperately hammered commands into the inactive helm console. He could feel his heartbeat pounding in his ears, and struggled for breath as terror threatened to overwhelm him.

Slamming into the surface of an unnamed planet a dozen light-years from Earth wasn't the way Antonio Levente had expected to die.

Dark spots began to form at the edge of his vision, the unmistakable hallmarks of a person nearing the point of blacking out. But even as everything around him started to vanish into a tunnel, Levente could make out the image of a million dirty green creatures swarming past the tumbling shuttlepod as they continued with their ascent.

Lifeforms!

Gasping for breath, what remained of Levente's rational brain attempted to analyse what he was seeing. These winged beings were generating the electromagnetic interference that had disabled the descending shuttle, possibly produced in a similar fashion to how electric eels on Earth created electrical discharges, and were now rapidly rising through the thin atmosphere toward space.

Each individual creature was no larger than a human forearm, covered in leathery green hide and with large fleshy wings that were beating powerfully. Levente decided that these beings had a bat like appearance, but he had never seen so many bats as he could now see creatures streaming past the shuttle's viewports.

He knew that they were heading for the awaiting _Pioneer_ in orbit.

But as his body finally succumbed to the immense g-forces and he blacked out, there was nothing Antonio Levente could do to protect the ship.


End file.
